


The Edge Between the Sand and the Stars

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: classified? i know all about that [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (not that sort of Skywalker), BB-8's bad language, Canon-Typical Violence, Chewbacca's bad language, Child Abandonment, Coping, Coruscant, Developing Relationship, Force Ghosts, Found Family, Genealogy, Grief/Mourning, Jakku, Jedi, Jedi Rey, Major character death - Freeform, Mentors, Mind Control, Multi, Original Trilogy as History, Past Relationships That Still Matter, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey Skywalker, Rogue One As History, Several Generations of Found Family, Slavery as in Canon, Slow Burn, Tatooine, Tatooine is a Death Planet, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force, Women Being Awesome, lah'mu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 21:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 124,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Rey goes looking for her past and future at the same time.***Complete.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY. FINALLY I am beginning to post.
> 
> With enormous thanks to celeste9, who beta'd this entire thing, twice, and to peradi, who has had to listen to me go on about it at length since last... uh... November. All the canon errors are my fault, not Celeste's.

_When Rey is a child she dreams of a woman._

_It is not her as an adult, though later she will wonder; nor is it her mother. Even as a baby of five or six years, Rey knows to separate her indistinct memories of calloused hands and a sweet singing voice from the woman in her dreams. And she knows this woman is older than her mother, with slighter shoulders, darker hair, a more worn face - and that she does not dress like Rey's mother. She dresses like a woman of the desert: loose layers, scarves. Her face is wind-burned, sand-burned, sun-burned._

_Rey remembers very little of her mother. She knows the desert woman better._

_At first the desert woman is by her side every night. When Rey curls up under a ragged blanket, shivering in the sharp cold of Jakku’s nights, the desert woman rocks her into waking sleep; strokes her hair, smooths strands off her forehead, and says, my loved one. And when Rey stops crying for her mother, real tears that will make her eyes sticky and her face sore tomorrow, the desert woman says: what shall I teach you tonight?_

_It is a question and it is not a question. The desert woman always knows what she will teach Rey, but she likes it best when Rey asks. Her lessons are half Rey's requests - the proportion increasing as Rey learns the limits and the dangers of Niima Outpost life - and half the desert woman's own ideas._

_Until she is six, Rey's last question is always: what is your name? and the desert woman does not answer._

_When she is six, Rey has learned that names are power, are currency, of a sort. Rey's name is all she has, as the desert woman's true name is all she has, and Rey understands, now, that there are a million ways to barter that power. And that sometimes, it is best to keep a little something in reserve, like the small, valuable components that she picks out with her quick young hands and her quick young eyes and keeps in a hidden belt the desert woman taught her to make, close to her skin, in case of a day when Unkar Plutt says she has not done enough._

_What shall I call you, Rey asks the desert woman, when she is six._

_The desert woman smiles, and she says - my loved one, call me your blood. For we are deserts' daughters, under these bright stars._

_My blood, Rey says, and the desert woman kisses her forehead. It burns like the hopeful fires on the homesteads to the east; Rey leans into it, for she wants to be set alight._

_The desert woman comes every night, until Rey is seven._

 

***

 

The first thing Luke said to Rey wasn't 'who are you', or 'why are you here', or even 'you should have commed ahead, I'd have put the kettle on'. All of these things would have made more sense than what he did say, which was:

 

"You're kin."

 

"Sorry," said Rey, outstretched handful of lightsaber wavering. "What?"

 

Luke ignored the lightsaber. "You're kin," he said, and pushed the lightsaber aside very gently, peering into Rey's face with blue eyes that could see out the other side of the stratosphere. "But I don't understand how."

 

"Would you like your lightsaber back?" Rey asked. It was not really a question, and neither was the way she shoved it at him.

 

"It's no longer my lightsaber," Luke said tranquilly. "Nor is it the most important or the most interesting question at hand."

 

"What in all the nine galactic hells do you expect me to do with a spare lightsaber?" Rey demanded, waving it at him.

 

"Use it," Luke said obliquely. "When necessary." He leaned back a little, and squinted. "You're not Han's daughter."

 

"I - no! No, I'm bloody not!"

 

"Or Leia's," Luke pursued.

 

Rey passed beyond the point of speech, and into indignant sputtering noises.

 

"And I would know if you were mine."

 

"Thank you very much!"

 

"But the fact remains." Luke paced a small circle, grey cloak floating out behind him. "You are kin to me. And I don't know how."

 

"Well, that makes two of us!" Rey yelled, flinging her arms wide in frustration and nearly throwing Luke Skywalker's legendary lightsaber off a cliff.

 

Luke stopped pacing and eyed her quizzically.

 

Rey pointed the lightsaber at him, fairly shaking with rage. Was this the Resistance's saviour? The wielder of untold power? The dealer of life and death? The most brilliant pilot the galaxy had ever boasted? An old man in a grey cloak on an island, fixating on the family of a know-nothing scavenger with a spark or two of the Force?

 

Was this what she'd hunted across a galaxy to find - what General Organa had searched for and Poe surrendered his freedom for?

 

" _You_ ," she said, and fought to get her emotions under control. "You - You _are_."

 

"Yes?" Luke said mildly.

 

"General Organa said I should smack you for her when I saw you," Rey said, through gritted teeth. "I'm beginning to understand why."

 

Luke smiled, and pulled his cloak up against the oncoming rain. "Leia has such a way with words," he said. "You snarl like she does. Come and have a cup of berry leaf tea."

 

Rey bit her tongue hard, and stamped after him down a path marked out with rough walls of grey stone.

 

 _Kin_ , part of herself said, as she followed Luke into a smoky circular broch, half-collapsed but still structurally secure, laid out for an anchorite or a desert wanderer's practical comfort. _Family_.

 

And very quietly, very deep down inside, some part of Rey said: _Blood_.

 

***

 

_You left, Rey says to the desert woman, seven years old, tearstained and accusatory._

_I never leave, my loved one, says the desert woman, who Rey has not seen for a whole night, who she prayed to see as she went to bed early. I am part of you._

_I don't kiss my own cheek, Rey says. I don't hug myself when I'm sad. I don't know everything you know._

_Oh, my loved one. Everybody grows up._

_What does that mean, Rey says, tiny dream-fists balled up in denial._

_It means one day you will know everything I know, says the desert woman. It means one day you will look for me as a friend, and not a shelter in the sandstorm._

_I need you, my blood, Rey says._

_My loved one, says the desert woman, and her touch on Rey's chin is soft and wistful and just a little distant. You need me less every day._

***

 

Luke didn't say anything else about Rey's family for some days, due chiefly to the fact that Rey dragged the conversation to the Resistance, Kylo Ren, and General Organa, and would not be budged from these points. When she faltered, she cheated by hauling Chewbacca into the discussion, thereby derailing it for at least a day and a night while Chewbacca upbraided Luke for his many and sundry failings, mostly relating to Luke's self-flagellation, and the impact of Luke's selfish behaviour on his sister, who required warriors and steadfast companions, not brothers who disappeared without adequate notice or a forwarding address.

 

Rey had had to get R2-D2 to pull up a dictionary and define 'self-flagellation' for her, as it was not a word she was familiar with, and she was still not sure she grasped the concept. Luke Skywalker moved with deliberation, certainly, but that didn’t appear to be because he was hurt. Although he frequently complained about his old bones and made Rey go and fetch water because he was too stiff and ancient, he moved about the steep hills of Ahch-To like a leaping lizard, and he wore power like spacers wore leather jackets, easy and loose. Luke had certainly not hurt himself.

 

After Chewbacca had finished haranguing Luke, and had begun energetically dismantling Luke's hermit's hut to transport his key belongings to the Resistance instead, Luke tried to ask Rey questions about her family again. Rey told him she might be willing to say something but she needed to visit the _Falcon_ , and Luke went with her, thereby falling neatly into her trap as R2-D2 whirred out of ambush to corner him against a high cliff wall and screech at him in Binary about TEN YEARS OF ABANDONMENT, YOU KRIFFING ORGANIC BASTARD.

 

"You lied," Luke said plaintively, backed up against a wall and ducking electrocution as R2-D2 charged him repeatedly. "Why didn't I know?"

 

"Desert's daughters know how to lie to survive," Rey said, surprising herself. It was years since the desert woman's lessons had come to her lips. "Anyway, you two have fun. I really do have supplies to fetch."

 

***

 

Luke thought General Organa should to be informed of his theory about Rey at once.

 

"That will be a... difficult conversation," he said, almost apprehensively. He was gazing out to sea as if he were gazing into General Organa's remorseless eyes, his robe flapping in the biting wind.

 

Rey pointed out that, due to the very remoteness of Ahch-To, and their extreme vulnerability if the First Order should happen to pick up their signals, a conversation was impossible. It would have to be a brief data burst transmission, and even Rey could see how that might be... inadequate, for delivering news of the magnitude Luke intended to deliver.

 

Not that Rey was at all sure he was right about this _kin_ nonsense. She would have liked to ask the desert woman, who had been the only constant source of guidance in her life, but she hadn't seen the desert woman since a very brief appearance several days into Finn's stay at the medcentre, and she might have hallucinated that. The tall, dignified figure standing among the machines and droids and smiling at Rey had glowed faintly blue, which Rey did not remember from her dreams, but Rey could never have mistaken that face. She had crossed the medcentre to lay a gentle hand on Finn's forehead, and then she had vanished, without saying a word to Rey.

 

"If you can do that _and_ focus on the Force _and_ talk to me, your handstands are too easy," Luke said abruptly. "Switch to one hand."

 

Rey tried to switch and promptly fell over. Luke's teaching was strange. It was not at all like the desert woman's. The desert woman was never inclined to let her pay the cost of failure; the price was generally far too high.

 

Rey picked herself up. "We could just go back," she suggested. "You could tell General Organa in person."

 

Luke looked conflicted. "I'm not done yet."

 

"What are you looking for here?" Rey demanded. Luke spent long hours in places she didn't yet know around the island, and when she reached out for his presence in the Force its steady blaze was contained by a hard shell she had never dared to touch. She was sure that part of the reason he had started teaching her bits and pieces of Jedi craft was to stop her asking too many questions.

 

"Things," Luke said cryptically. He sighed, and ran his flesh hand through his hair. "Kriffing hell. But Leia needs to know at once."

 

"Why?" Rey said, honestly baffled. "Either way, I'm still the same person. I'm still as useful. Or not. It doesn't actually matter."

 

"It will if the First Order finds out." Luke's mouth twisted, and she knew he was wondering what would happen if Kylo Ren found out.

 

Rey wasn't scared of Kylo Ren. She wanted to learn how to beat him in a fight, fair or unfair, and then she wanted to beat him to a pulp. For Finn's sake. For Han's. For Poe's. For General Organa's.

 

"I'm already a target," Rey said, carefully setting vengeful daydreams aside and reminding herself they were only daydreams, and had no bearing on what she really ought to do if she had Kylo Ren at her mercy. She flipped into a second handstand, this one one-handed. "I don't see that it would make a difference. It doesn't matter whose legs I came out of, I still cut Kylo Ren's face in half."

 

Luke huffed, and then – reluctantly - smiled. "Just so long as this Finn you're always talking about isn't a long-lost brother," he said, "we'll probably be all right."

 

" _Brother_?" Rey said in astonishment, and fell out of her second handstand.

 

"Ah," Luke said wryly. "Has nobody told you that story?"

 

***

 

 

In the end they told General Organa that there was something very important about Rey, and also, that they were coming home.

 

The encrypted message they received in return – so fast that General Organa must have turned it around the moment their message made it to D’Qar – consisted of the words: _You don’t say, Luke. Well done, Rey. Hurry up, both of you._

 

“Better get a move on,” Rey chirped. Her mind was already running ahead, to Finn, to BB-8, to the Resistance, to Finn’s handsome pilot, who she’d only spent a few hours with – sitting in the medical bay, watching Finn breathe, puzzling out letters that every child Poe knew could read with ease – and wanted to know more of. Finn deserved someone really impressive, and she hadn’t seen enough of Poe Dameron to know if he was a worthy mate.

 

Luke eyed her. “You’re very excited to be going back to war.”  


“I’m very excited to go back to my friends,” Rey retorted, and realised – with a sudden and not entirely unpleasant jolt – that she’d nearly said ‘go home’.

 

“Don’t think I’m going to let you slack on your lessons,” Luke warned her.

 

“Just so long as you teach me,” Rey said.

 

They left just after sunset, because Luke said it was his favourite time of day, and because he particularly disliked the dawn. Rey didn’t care, personally, but she knew that Luke found a certain peace sitting on the cliffs of Ahch-To, watching the sun fall below the horizon, and she couldn’t begrudge it him. There was a grief about him sometimes – a whisper, a hint in the corner of her eye.

 

She sat with him on the cliffs and meditated. In the circle of broken flat stones where Luke liked to sit, it was easy; as easy as meditating with General Organa.

 

The last sliver of the sun’s orange light slid beneath the waves, and the sky purpled with the oncoming night.

 

To Rey’s surprise, Luke unfolded himself and stood up first, with a creak and a melodramatic groan.

 

“Time to go,” he said. He sounded sad.  
  
She stood up. “Have you got everything?”

 

His eyes lingered on her. “I have some of what I came here for, I believe,” he said, “and it may be enough. And there are other factors I did not account for, that may prove far more important.” A small, painful smile cracked his face, and Rey caught her breath. “The immanence of the Force is quite beyond you or I, Rey. We are lucky just to know that it’s there.”

 

“Lucky is one word for it,” Rey said, and patted him gently on the shoulder. She didn’t know why she felt like being kind to him; only that he was an old man, and sad, and when she thought about it she knew that he had been aware of his blood-brother’s death long before she told him of it, and that he had grieved that loss and others in silence and loneliness. “Come on. We’ll lose the light and you’ll fall down the stairs and General Organa will be really angry with me.”

 

Luke snorted.

 

Rey pulled them out of atmo, and then Chewbacca wrested the controls from her and told her to go and sleep, trainee Jedi were the worst for running themselves ragged and he wasn’t going to have any self-sacrificing nonsense from her. Rey, who had learned when it was worth arguing with Chewbacca – almost never, in her increasingly wide experience – obediently gave up the controls and left for her bunk. The _Falcon_ already looked curious, with an extra person’s belongings strewn about it. Luke had dropped his grey cloak on top of the dejarik table.

 

As she went, Luke stepped past her, nodding and wishing her a good sleep. Rey glanced back as she walked away, and caught sight of Luke settling into the pilot’s chair.

 

Chewbacca growled at him. Rey checked her footsteps, in case she needed to rescue the last Master of the Jedi Order from an angry Wookiee. She knew Chewbacca had not forgiven Luke yet, and that they had not spoken of anything more serious than Luke’s habit of feeding the birds on Ahch-To, or the loose negative power coupling that had always been a problem on the _Falcon_. They had not discussed Han or Kylo Ren, and since Chewbacca’s first howled lecture nothing had been said of Leia.

 

“Tell me about it,” Luke said heavily. “Chewie. Tell me what happened.”  


Rey froze, and then, suddenly, she heard Luke in her ears – but his voice was quite different. It was as if she heard the desert woman again; the same tone, but a different inflection, a different accent, and the voice spoke directly to her, without the distortion of distance or acoustics. _Rey, you nosy child. Go to bed. Chewie won’t hurt me._

 

“Sorry, Luke,” Rey yelled.

 

Chewbacca roared at her to fuck off and sleep.

 

Rey stifled a wholly inappropriate giggle, and fucked off to her bunk to sleep.

 

***

 

Rey couldn't escape Luke and his never-ending interest in her forebears once they were in hyperspace; if nothing else, she couldn't pitch him out of an airlock without destroying the _Falcon_ , and Chewbacca bellowed if she even thought about meddling with their carefully plotted, calculated, obscured course. She had run out of ways to deflect Luke using the war, and he was just as good as deflecting her enquiries about the Force using the mystery of her parentage as she was at deflecting his queries about the mystery of her parentage using the war.

 

"Where are you from?" Luke said, sliding into the co-pilot's chair one watch when Rey was doing nothing but staring at the instruments and the light-bleeding edges of hyperspace. "Desert's daughter."

 

"Jakku," Rey said, accepting the inevitable with no grace at all.

 

"Were you born there?"

 

"No," Rey said, and after a moment added "I think."

 

"You don't know?"

 

"My family left me there," Rey said, and that old hurt throbbed between her ribs. She picked at the plasleather covering of the pilot's seat, tearing it away from the piping, piece by piece. "When I was five."

 

"Alone?" Luke's tone was calmer than it was gentle, for which Rey was grateful.

 

"Yes," Rey said. She honestly wondered what else Luke could have interpreted from her words.

 

"Do you remember them?"

 

"A little, sometimes," Rey said. In Maz's palace, that skinny-armed baby screaming _come back, come back_ \- she had remembered more, that little thing, that sand wisp. But that baby had had to grow, and Rey had paid for her future with the memories of her past. "Not much. No names."

 

"Where did you live?"

 

"In Niima Outpost, until I was fourteen," Rey said. "After that, in a shelter I made from an old crashed AT-AT. Not far away, but hard to find."

 

"Did you work?"

 

Rey leaned forward to press buttons and flick switches on the console, to request a sitrep on the _Falcon_ 's running. She didn't need the onboard computers to tell her the _Falcon_ was flying as sweetly as ever, and she didn't need the Force, either. She could feel the ship in her bones; she breathed with the oscillations of its hyperdrive, and her heart beat in time with the coolant's pulse. It wasn't the same thing.

 

"Yes," Rey said at last. "For someone called Unkar Plutt."

 

"Did he have any... documentation? About you?"

 

"Yes," Rey said. "At least, he said so. I only saw it once. It might have been faked."

 

"You are strong enough in the Force that false documents would not pass you by." Luke leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "Were you a slave?" he asked.

 

Rey said nothing.

 

"Tatooine farm boy, remember," Luke said casually, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his robe. He always had more pockets, and was forever producing things from them, like a magic trick. Yesterday it had been a very small vibroblade. Two days before it had been a block of intolerably chewy spacer toffee, still in its tin. "First-generation free on my father's side.”

 

"Are you telling me you understand?" Rey said. She didn't know what she felt: she set it aside carefully, to be unpacked and understood and released into the Force as General Organa had tried to teach her later. "The answer is I don't know. Unkar Plutt let me move away, but he knew I didn't have far to go, and I wouldn't leave in case my family came back. The flimsis he showed me had my name on, but that's all the Aurebesh I can read. They could've said anything."

 

"You can't read?"

 

"No." Rey got up. "Poe started teaching me, but we had to stop so I could come and find you. For the sake of the war. Remember that?" She looked down at him, still slouching in his chair, and he looked back. "If you're not busy, can you take the next watch? I need to wash."

 

***

_What shall I teach you tonight, my loved one? says the desert woman._

_Rey is nine and has not seen the desert woman for three whole weeks. She only sniffles a little._

_Teach me how to bargain, she says. My blood._

_First lesson, says the desert woman, her gentle eyes sharp, and Rey tilts her head back to meet those eyes - a little less than she had to a few years ago. Never bargain with your own self as coin. The price is always higher than you think to pay._

 


	2. Chapter 2

General Organa was waiting for them on the tarmac at the Resistance’s new base; D’Qar, apparently, was now considered vulnerable. Rey was pleased to see that this was another green planet, or green-ish. It was cold, which she disliked, but the loose black rock and high mountains were pretty against the low, vivid green of the vegetation around the base, and she could appreciate the way the broken landscape impaired anyone scanning the planet from orbit. Besides, Chewbacca said he’d been here before – under somewhat less than legal circumstances – and he said that, when the skies cleared, they were beautiful, lilac and silver-clouded with a triple moonrise in the evening.

 

The skies did not often clear, though, and when Rey dragged Luke back to the Resistance, it was tipping it down. There was a small huddle on the tarmac, where General Organa was standing under a large umbrella held by a very familiar face.

 

“Finn!” Rey cried, jumping to her feet and leaning forward to see him better.

 

Chewbacca rumbled an enquiry as to whether he was expected to finish the landing cycle by himself.

 

“I did it by myself last time, you old fraud,” Rey said, sweeping his objections aside and peering out of the Falcon’s front viewport. Finn was holding on tightly to a sturdy cane as well as the umbrella, grinning fit to burst and backed up by Poe, wearing that obnoxious orange jumpsuit. Black Squadron had escorted them in from about the orbit of the moons, and Rey had been pleased to be greeted by a familiar voice, but Poe Dameron had peeled away from the squadron to land early and find Finn. Rey smiled back at Finn helplessly.

 

“He’d better be taking care of himself,” she said.

 

“DNA test,” Luke said darkly, from the seat further back in the cockpit. He looked almost resigned, but there was a spark of wistfulness in him, she thought, and it made the would-be joke fall flat. “And stop trying to _pry_ , Rey.”

 

“I’m not prying, I just…” She looked back over her shoulder, steadying herself with a hand on the headrest.

 

Luke looked back at her. The slight, bittersweet smile on his face was, so far as Rey could tell at this distance, an exact match for the one on General Organa’s face.

 

“Be kind,” Rey said finally. “She’s lost a lot. Be kind.”

 

Luke held her eyes for a moment longer, and then inclined his head. Rey could practically see the weight of guilt settle on his shoulders, heavy on his Jedi robes.

 

“Don’t,” Rey said, instinctively paraphrasing words she had heard in a dream, a long time ago. “Guilt is useless, and it’s a waste of time. You just – you have to do better.”

 

Luke raised his head again and blinked at her. “Where did you learn that?”

 

“Someone told me once,” Rey answered, flustered for reasons she didn’t understand, and fell heavily into the console in front of her as the _Falcon_ ’s landing pads connected.

 

Chewbacca roared a remark to the effect that he could have told Rey that would happen, and also that if Luke didn’t treat his sister properly, he (Chewbacca) would personally remove his (Luke’s) remaining flesh arm at the socket and beat him with it.

 

R2-D2 burbled a response along the lines of _just fucking try it, you walking hairball, he’s mine to torture_.

 

Luke began to look put-upon.

 

“Sort it out amongst yourselves,” Rey said, yanked on an old-fashioned rainproof poncho and pulled the hood over her head, and ran out into the rain to greet her friends.

 

 

Finn dropped his cane and the umbrella and ran to meet her; Poe Dameron let out a shout of laughter and caught both, and General Organa grinned, but Rey saw neither of them, too caught up in Finn’s arms flying round her, the warmth and solidity and reality of him.

 

“You’re all right, you’re all right, you’re all right,” she found herself saying, laughing into the skin of his neck as he scooped her off her feet with a grunt.

 

“I’m in physio every day and my spine is forty percent metal,” Finn said cheerfully, before setting her down, feet thudding to the ground. “Rey. You came back.”

 

“I promised,” Rey reminded him, closing her eyes and pressing her face into the shoulder of that much-battered leather jacket. “I promised. Did -?”  


“Poe said,” Finn assured her. “He told me. First thing he told me, when I woke up. ‘Rey says she’s coming back, she’s got a Jedi to collect’.” He took her shoulders and held her gently away from him. “Except now we have _two_ Jedi, right?”

 

“We have a Jedi and a half,” Rey corrected, and then her eyes went to General Organa, who had taught her to meditate in the few frantic days before she flew away to locate Luke. _You’ll need this_ , she remembered General Organa saying _, you’ll need to be able to be calm, Luke is enraging when he wants to be_ , and Rey had accepted the lesson as a gift the way she’d accepted all the desert woman’s gifts. “Maybe we have two and a half Jedi.”

 

“I’ve always preferred a good blaster,” General Organa remarked, coming forward and smiling warmly at them both. “But right now I would like to observe that we have half a _damp_ Jedi. We didn’t pick this planet for its weather. Come under the umbrella, Rey – you too, Finn, Major Kalonia will have my head for letting you stand around in this.”

 

“Maybe I should drag Luke off the _Falcon_ first,” Rey said, eyeing the ship. She hadn’t seen any movement. “And I’m fine.” She tugged on her poncho. “Finn, you should…”

 

Finn stepped back under the umbrella. Poe was still smiling at him; Rey approved. “Maybe we should let Master Skywalker know we’re out here.”

 

General Organa tilted her head to one side, her silvery hair – half-braided, half caught up in a plain black net – gleaming in the low light. “He knows,” she said, with perfect confidence, and then held her arms open to Rey. “Welcome home, Rey.”

 

Rey all but fell into the General’s arms, the way she had after Starkiller, and her embrace felt like a kind of serenity and comfort Rey had never consciously known: the steady heat of a banked fire that only needed stirring to rise in flame, rather than the desert vastness of Luke’s Force presence. She sank into it, exactly the way she had after Starkiller.

 

 _I shouldn’t need comfort_ , she thought to herself.

 

 _Luke rattles everyone_ , the General remarked silently. Rey, who was getting used to Skywalker habits when it came to telepathy, did not jump. _One way or another._

 

Rey curled her fists into the General’s soft green woollen coat.

 

 _He doesn’t scare me_ , she replied, careful to make the words clear and not yell.

 

 _I never said that_ , the General reprimanded her, gently, and then – equally gently – let her go.

 

Rey could feel Luke’s Force presence approaching. She stepped to one side, instead of back, and the General smiled at her and stepped out into the rain. Poe moved forward instinctively, but Rey checked him with a hand on his chest.

 

“She’ll get another cold,” Poe said, watching the two small figures move towards each other. Luke Skywalker, Last and First of the Jedi. Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance, Princess of Alderaan.

 

“It’ll be fine,” Rey said. “At least. That will be.”  


They had stopped and were talking to each other, and it felt like the entire base had come to a halt. Rey couldn’t hear a word from either of them, although they weren’t standing so far away.

 

“He okay?” Finn said.

 

“Sort of,” Rey answered. It was difficult to explain Luke; she got the feeling that General Organa had given up decades ago, and Rey didn’t feel equal to the task. There was a distance in him, a reserve, that made it hard to get through to him. Sometimes she thought he did it on purpose; other times she thought it was the way he’d been taught to be, and he wasn’t quite sure of anything else.

 

Rey remembered something. “Oh,” she said, and looped an arm around Poe’s waist. “I’m sorry, Poe, I wasn’t trying to leave you out.”

 

Poe grinned down at her. “No worries, padawan,” he said, and hugged her back.

 

Fifteen metres away, Leia Organa put her arms around her brother, and Luke Skywalker bent his head to her shoulder and held onto her tightly.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said: Rey heard him, on the edge of her senses. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“Welcome home,” the General answered.

 

 

They proceeded into the base and were immediately waylaid by two quartermasters and Lando Calrissian, who had probably been tipped off by the quartermasters and seemed to be there mostly to rake Luke over the coals for having disappeared. Luke flinched but smiled under the older man’s merciless teasing, and after a few minutes he actually looked peculiarly more at home, more ready to start returning Lando’s genial jibes.

 

It was like magic. Rey watched, almost enthralled, and was caught by surprise when a short Rodian quartermaster dropped a large pack stuffed with rain kit into her arms and presented her with a datapad and a swipe bracelet that would get her through most necessary doors.

 

“Sign here for your things, you’re rooming with Rook and Dameron, they’ll be able to show you where.”

 

Rey carefully printed her name in Aurebesh and handed the datapad back.

 

Poe whistled. “Nice. You’ve been practising.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Rey said, slinging the pack over her back and poking at the bracelet. It looked to her like it also contained some sort of tracker, presumably in case it – or she – became lost. Rey resolved to disable it at the first opportunity; the desert woman had taught her long ago that she should not be easy to find. “I didn’t want to forget everything while I was gone. Waste your time.”  


“You couldn’t waste my time if you tried, Rey.” Poe clapped her on the shoulder. “I think your teacher has been spirited away.”

 

Rey looked up and around hurriedly, and found that Lando Calrissian was escorting Luke inexorably away down a corridor, General Organa smiling after them, both of them pursued by a quartermaster.

 

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Rey said. “He’s tough.”

 

“Lando just wants to find out where he’s been,” General Organa said very dryly. “And I’ve made him promise to deliver Luke to my office in an hour’s time.” She looked at Rey. “I understand you and Luke have news of some sort of us.”  


“Er,” Rey said. “Well, more Luke, really, but…”

 

“I’ll see you there,” General Organa said, nodded smartly, turned on her heel and walked away.

 

“I think that was an order,” Rey said.

 

“Probably,” Finn said, and grinned at her. “Welcome to the Resistance.”

 

They showed her to the room they were staying in, which was how Rey found out that Finn had given himself the surname Rook (“A lot of defectors do it – it’s after this defector from the first Civil War who helped destroy the first Death Star – you can share the name too, if you like.”) The room was comparatively spacious, and Rey got the impression that that made them very lucky. There were four bunks, two of them plainly occupied, and a small, narrow window that would probably get the dawn sunlight if it weren’t mostly overgrown by green curling vines.

 

Rey didn’t mind that. She liked growing things, and the soft circular light that glowed on the ceiling did a good job of mimicking daylight.

 

She took the spare bottom bunk, and dropped the few things she had brought from the _Falcon_ and her new pack of kit on the floor beside it, hanging up her wet rain poncho on a hook attached to the black metal bedframe. A droid charging station near her bed was occupied by a familiar-looking orange and white droid; Rey beamed.

  
“Hey, BB-8, buddy,” Poe said, smiling back at her and pitching his voice to the droid’s aural sensors. “Wake up, look who it is.”

 

BB-8 flickered into life, let out a very high-pitched whistle, and rolled at Rey with such speed and momentum that Rey stumbled and nearly fell over her.

 

 _Watch out, banthafucker_ , Finn whistled, in clumsy but cheerful Binary. _Don’t break the_ – “Um.”

 

Poe produced a much clearer whistle of tones Rey didn’t recognise. “Jedi,” he translated for Rey’s benefit.

 

“Are you – you both speak Binary?” Rey dropped to her knees and put her arms around BB-8, who was chattering and rolling in very small circles for her attention.

 

“I understand it better than I speak it,” Poe said. “Finn speaks it very well.”

 

Finn blushed kirilwood-red. “I just want to understand what they’re saying.”

 

 _He’s not bad for a human_ , BB-8 volunteered. _Humans have shitty fucking voiceboxes that don’t do anything useful, you poor bastards._

 

Rey couldn’t help laughing; she was vaguely aware that her cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling, but she couldn’t stop herself doing that, either. “And I think I know who taught you.”

 

Finn grinned at her. “BB-8’s a good teacher.”  


“I once tried to do something about the swearing subroutine,” Poe admitted, “but BB ran over my foot so many times I broke a toe and I decided it wasn’t worth it.” He got up from where he’d been sitting next to Finn on the bunk Rey was almost positive was Finn’s – an upturned crate next to it held several tubes of medication, two datapads, a stack of flimsis and a water-bottle, all lined up in perfect order like the highly-polished spare pair of boots under the bed, while the top bunk had posters and cards stuck unevenly round the walls and a small light crystal on a shelf protruding from the wall – and dusted his hands off on his trousers. “Rey, you must be hungry.”  


“Kind of,” Rey said, omitting to mention the snacks she had in every pocket; more food was always good, and it was true she hadn’t had anything for a few hours.

 

“We’ve got time to get something from the mess before you need to be in General Organa’s office,” Poe offered. “And you should know where it is, anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” Rey said. “That would be good.”

 

 

There was a lot of staring on the walk to the mess. Rey tried to focus on something – anything – else, like Poe talking about the base, or Finn pointing out useful places she needed to know about. But her second senses had grown increasingly obtrusive while living on Ahch-To as she learned to flex them, and there were a lot more people here, crammed into a much smaller space. Most of them were paying attention to her, because she was the New Jedi and had Brought Luke Skywalker Back, and Rey felt every capital letter in those concepts like a gale-force wind buffeting her. She was struggling to block them out, filter out her awareness of other people’s thoughts. It felt like Niima Outpost on a trading day, only… only worse, if she was honest with herself. At least when she lived at Niima Outpost she hadn’t known what she was listening to, or even that she could listen to it. Luke had tried to teach her how to shield properly, but her shields had never been tested in a situation like this. This was the Resistance’s nerve centre; there was a lot going on.  
  
Rey wondered if she could go to sleep and wish for the desert woman to come to her and explain how to quiet down the sense of other people’s minds. It helped when Chewbacca roared at her to sit down and eat something, she was looking pasty, and when he and Finn claimed a corner for her to sit in and Poe went to grab some food for her, deliberately drawing people’s attention away by offering them a source of information. She could tell, if she listened, that they were asking him about her.

  
Rey drew her feet up onto the bench, pressed her back against the wall, and tried to raise the shield that Luke had taught her about, look for the resources she had drawn on when faced with Kylo Ren. It was difficult; there were a hundred threads of interest to counter here, not just one malignant demand.

 

 _Skywalker is getting it in the neck as well_ , Chewbacca roared, patting her knee comfortingly. _Do you want me to tell ’em to fuck off?_

 

“No,” Rey said, shutting her eyes to see if it would help. “Thanks, Chewbacca.”

 

“Is this… Force stuff?” Finn asked, a bit tentatively. “Is Master Skywalker teaching you to… fix it?”

 

“Yeah, but. I need to practise.” Rey opened her eyes, on the grounds that closing them was not helping. Across the room, Poe disposed neatly of two pilots in orange and an assortment of people in beige and strolled over, carrying a heavily-laden tray which he set down on the table in front of her.

 

“I heard you like fresh things,” Poe said. “And variety. I brought you a bit of pretty much everything, they were keen to feed you.”

 

Rey was caught between wincing at the amount of attention she was being paid and staring at Poe. “How do you – Oh.”

 

Poe grinned. “You are Finn’s number one favourite topic of conversation, you must have noticed.”

 

“Actually he mostly talks to me about you,” Rey said, helping herself carefully to crisp green sticks cut from some kind of vegetable, and watching Poe and Finn both turn slightly pink. “He says you’re a hell of a pilot.” She cleared her throat. “This is too much just for me, you – you help yourselves, too.”

 

Finn picked up a piece of soft fruit and tried very hard to disappear into it.

 

“He says you got the _Millennium Falcon_ to do a backflip inside a ruined star destroyer,” Poe countered, helping himself to a dish of creamy grains, and waved a fork illustratively. “What I want to know is how did you get your hands on the _Millennium Falcon_?”

 

Chewbacca howled a remark to the effect that he would also like to know that, because he had some limbs to tear off.

 

“Unkar Plutt – he ran the junkyard I scavenged for – he stole it,” Rey said, trying the soft fruit. It was good, clear and sweet-tasting, not musky like some stuff she’d tried, so she popped the entire piece into her mouth. “When BB-8 and I found Finn –” BB-8 burbled loudly from below the table – “troopers came to Niima Outpost and we really needed to get out fast.”

 

Finn nodded vehemently.          

 

“I was actually aiming for a different ship, but they blew that up before we got to it.” Rey shrugged. “I didn’t even know it was the _Millennium Falcon_ , we just needed to get away.” She tried some of the creamy grains; they were rich and soft and kind of bland, but they tasted good. She was getting used to food which didn’t all taste the same; she’d never had much to eat on Jakku that wasn’t a synthetic portion, but the Resistance didn’t eat those unless they had no choice at all, and Han and Chewbacca had stocked the _Falcon_ with very different prepacked meals, so everything she’d eaten since she left Jakku was new and strange.

 

“Does she fly as well as everyone says?” Poe asked.

 

 _Like a dream_ , Chewbacca rumbled.

 

“Better,” Rey said. “I’ve never flown anything that – you just ask and she does it.”

 

“You’ve never flown another ship,” Finn pointed out, and Chewbacca growled at him. “Hey! Just stating the facts.”

 

Rey and Poe chuckled, and she prodded Chewbacca with a toe.

 

Chewbacca admitted that the _Falcon_ was a beauty, but not when the hyperdrive died just as you were trying to evade Imperials, and no ship could fly well without a good pilot. Rey was good enough.

 

Rey blushed.

 

She only realised later - when she left the mess - that while she sat with her friends and talked, the pressure of other people’s attention had eased so that she hardly felt it at all.

 

 

Finn, Poe and Chewbacca walked with her to the General’s office, at which point Chewbacca let himself in, Finn nearly stepped across the threshold but checked, and Poe tried to excuse himself.

 

“Why is there a traffic jam in my office doorway?” demanded the General, completely invisible since Chewbacca was between her and Rey. “Come inside or go away.”

 

Rey, who suddenly felt like she would rather not face this without her friends, grabbed Poe by the sleeve and Finn by the back of his jacket and propelled them into the office.

 

“Uh, Rey,” Finn said, and Poe chimed in: “I’m not sure this is any of my business – um, excuse me, ma’am.”

 

“I’m only going to tell you anyway,” Rey said, and realised as the words left her mouth that it was true. Knowledge was power, but she had never dreamed of not telling Finn and Poe about this.

 

They looked at her, Finn confused and Poe quizzical.

 

“It can’t hurt, Leia,” Luke said, from where he stood behind General Organa’s desk.

 

“You said this should be privileged information,” General Organa said, but it didn’t sound like disagreement. Her eyes swept over Finn and Poe. “Well, I can think of worse people to tell. I suppose.”

 

“I want them to stay,” Rey said. She was sure of that, at least.  


Luke raised a hand, and the door closed behind Finn and Poe, which made them and Rey jump slightly.

 

“Show-off,” General Organa said, staring pointedly down at a datapad. “Well, sit down, all of you, no point standing around my office like a bunch of concussed nerf-herders.”

 

It took a few moments for them to arrange themselves, and then Rey and Luke looked at each other. She didn’t know where to begin; she hoped he knew that, and would help.

 

“Rey is kin to you and me, Leia,” Luke said, quiet but carrying, his voice full of certainty. Rey stared at her lap, so she wouldn’t see Finn’s crinkled look of scepticism, or Poe looking slowly from her to General Organa and back again.

 

General Organa gave Luke an extremely sceptical look. “I would have noticed,” she said deliberately, “if I’d had another child.” She tapped her fingers on her datapad. “Or if you’d had a child at all.” She looked across at Rey, and her face softened a little. “I know you worry about your family, Rey. Please believe that – if Han and I had lost you, niece or daughter, we would never have stopped searching for you. And I would never have let you leave to find Luke without telling you the truth.”

 

Rey opened her mouth to say something, offer some kind of gratitude, but she found herself choked by something hard and hot and sore in her throat that made her eyes sting and her head pound. She nodded instead, and clenched her hands in her lap. Finn put an arm around her shoulders; Poe touched her clasped hands gently. Rey leaned into Finn, and managed a small tight smile for Poe.

 

Chewbacca roared at Luke that he could just fucking explain himself, right now, please.

 

Luke opened and closed his hands, looking down at them for a moment. Then he looked up and straightened as if he had decided on something, or found the words for it. “I know you aren’t my daughter. I know you aren’t Leia’s or Han’s. But there’s an affinity between the three of us, sitting here in this room, that is not… not coincidental. It’s not merely that you are strong with the Force. You… you are like us.” He coughed. “We don’t know very much about our family. I think we can assume you’re from the Skywalker branch.”

 

Rey looked helplessly at Finn, and Poe, and the General.

 

The General dropped her stylus and sat back in her chair. “We would certainly have heard about it from the Naberrie cousins if you were a missing Naberrie. But Skywalkers…?” She shook her head. “I don’t know of any others in the galaxy.” She sighed. “You’ve always felt familiar to me, Rey, but I assumed that was bleeding over from Han. Han told me, before… Well, he told me you reminded him of Luke.”

 

Rey nearly choked on that, and she wrapped her hands around Poe’s where it had been laid casually close to her, gripping tightly. Finn pressed his head against hers. “He…”  


“You told me he offered you a job,” Luke said, and his smile was bittersweet. “He offered me one too, once – before the Battle of Yavin.”

 

“Before the –” Poe stopped himself. “Sorry, sir. Ma’am.”  


General Organa’s lips quirked. “Yes. History thanks Luke for not accepting that particular job offer.” She sighed again. “Anyway – Han was about as Force-sensitive as my desk. If he saw a resemblance of some kind, in a strange girl from a strange planet, it can’t have been an artefact of your Force presence. But Han’s thoughts and feelings could sometimes influence mine, when we were… close. My Force abilities are not the same as my brother’s, but we both hear the people we are linked to very well. I was always conscious of it, I used to discount it, and I discounted it here.” Her eyes lingered on Rey. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done.”

 

“I don’t…” Rey’s voice was creaking. “I don’t understand where I fit in, here. I told Luke. I don’t think it matters where I came from, I am what I am right now.”

 

“Yeah,” Finn said softly, and Rey leaned into him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Poe nod.

 

“Well, I’m inclined to agree with you.” The General leaned forward in her seat, eyes flashing wide and eyebrows tilting sceptically, mouth twisted fondly. Rey could read that expression, she found, as clearly as if the General had spoken: _Oh, Luke, you come up with the weirdest things_. “Me, my parents were Bail and Breha Organa. I never wanted to know anything more.”

 

 _But you do know more_ , Rey thought suddenly, and squashed it before anyone else could pick up on it.

 

“Luke?” the General continued. “He was raised by his aunt and uncle. He always wanted to know. It’s not the same.”

 

“I want to know,” Rey corrected, “I just don’t think… I’m me. I’m Rey. I want my family, but I – I’m going to be a Jedi, and I’m going to fight for the Resistance, and I’m going to kick Kylo Ren from here to Dantooine, and I don’t see that my parents are… are part of that. I mean, I hope I matter for what I am. Not… where I came from.”

 

“You matter, Rey,” Luke said, with the certainty of the desert’s bones. “Regardless of what we may or may not find out about your family. You matter to everyone in this room.”  


Chewbacca howled that he was glad to hear Luke saying something sensible for once. Luke winced.

 

“You deserved that,” the General said, without looking at Luke or Chewbacca. “Luke is right, Rey, you matter. As for where you fit in the family, that’s potentially complicated. Not having grown up on Tatooine, I lack some context that Luke learned first-hand.” General Organa picked up a datapad with an air of setting the conversation down, leaving somebody else to pick it up.

 

Rey stared at Luke, hoping for clarification.  Luke leaned forward in his seat, and for a moment, Rey could see everything about him and General Organa that named them twins.

 

“Our mother –“

 

General Organa looked up from her datapad.

 

“- biological mother was a woman called Padmé Naberrie. Our biological father was a Jedi called Anakin Skywalker.” Luke paused. “Padmé Naberrie was a wealthy, free woman from a wealthy planet called Naboo. She did a term as Queen of Naboo.” His lips quirked just the way General Organa’s had. “Anakin Skywalker had a very different background. He was born into slavery on Tatooine and rescued by a Jedi called Qui-Gon Jinn when he was nine. He was extraordinarily Force-sensitive, so he became a Jedi.”

 

“They left our biological grandmother behind, though,” General Organa remarked in the general direction of her datapad.

 

“There was a lot wrong with the late Republic Jedi,” Luke conceded, and a grimace passed across his face. Rey picked up a flash of a small, wizened green face, and a trusted voice saying _true… from a certain point of view_. “They left Anakin’s mother behind, Shmi Skywalker. She was freed and married a man called Cliegg Lars. Cliegg’s son and daughter-in-law, our aunt and uncle, raised me. By that point Shmi was dead.” He frowned and rubbed a hand over his chin. “Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen never told me about any brothers or sisters of Owen’s, and I certainly never knew of anyone. It was a tightly-knit world; I have to assume that if Shmi had had another child after marrying Cliegg I would have known who they were, and that they would have used the name Lars. I also assume that if Shmi had had any _other_ children before Anakin, they would have maintained ties with the Lars family. My aunt… she kept things for Anakin. My uncle wanted to erase his memory in many ways, said he was dead and that was that. My aunt disagreed. She said they never knew for sure.”

 

There was a long pause.

 

“She sounds like a good person,” Rey volunteered.

 

“She was,” Luke said softly. “A very good person.”  


“Shame she got stuck raising you,” General Organa informed her datapad, and scribbled something on it with her stylus. “Luke, I swear by the Force, Wedge had a smaller stick up his arse when we were younger.”

 

“Wedge didn’t have a _stick_ up his arse,” Luke retorted, and then apparently caught the backwash of abject horror from the younger generation, and coughed. “Never mind the paperwork, Leia.”

 

“Doesn’t do itself.” General Organa stabbed the datapad with the stylus vindictively.

 

Luke rolled his eyes. “Anyway. I assume that if Beru knew of any other sisters or brothers-in-law she would have maintained relations with them as well, somehow. So it is, I think, most probable that you are descended from a sister or brother of Shmi’s. Of our grandmother’s. Which I suppose makes you some sort of cousin. We will need to try to find the rest of that branch of cousins; Kylo Ren-” he hesitated over the name very slightly, and Poe tensed - "has something of an obsession with Darth Vader's blood, and if your family have no idea who they are and what they can do, they will be extremely vulnerable to the First Order."  


There was another long pause.

 

“Er,” Rey said.

 

“Spit it out, Rey,” the General said, emitted a couple of swearwords Rey thought she must have picked up from Chewbacca, and pulled a pair of glasses from her desk, squinting down at the datapad.

 

“Why would he think - I mean - That’s not a relation anyone I know recognises,” Rey blurted. “It's not a real blood relationship. I mean, on Jakku…” She shrugged awkwardly, her grey felt jacket moving strangely over her shoulders. It was warmer than the jacket she’d left for Ahch-To in, but it was still odd to her.  
  
  


"The Force still flows with you," the General said, without looking up. "He would probably think that was close enough, regardless of your opinion."  


 

“Man,” Finn said, at almost the same time - he winced at having very nearly interrupted the General, but she waved him on. “Rey, Jakku is _weird_ , okay.”

 

“You used to be a stormtrooper,” Rey pointed out, “the whole idea was that they took away your family. In the desert…”  


“Tatooine is a desert planet too,” Luke pointed out. “On Tatooine, you claim all the kin you’ve got, and they have a claim on you.”

 

 _Any clan would be proud to own you_ , Chewbacca yowled, _and you can only improve the Skywalkers, they have about a fifty percent success rate._

 

“Thanks, Chewie,” General Organa said, looking profoundly unimpressed.

 

Rey looked at Poe, who gave her a sympathetic smile, but shrugged.

 

“Hey,” he said, easy and warm. “I have hundreds of cousins on Yavin, people I’m actually blood to and people my parents raised as their own nieces and nephews. I don’t even think about how I’m related to people any more.”

 

“But it doesn’t matter,” Rey said, feeling frustrated. “It doesn’t – I mean…”

 

“Rey,” General Organa said gently, and Rey felt the General catch and hold her attention like it was a precious thing. “It doesn’t matter. Unless it helps us find your family. Then it matters.”  


That was the point at which Rey burst into tears.

 

 

A few hours later, Rey had managed to rebuild her composure and her shields, and had given a cheek swab at the medical bay, along with Luke, General Organa, and – “just in case,” General Organa said, with an exceptionally peculiar look on her face – Poe and Finn. Major Kalonia had certainly looked very curious, but General Organa hadn’t said anything, and the silence of the medical staff about confidential matters was something you could count on. Poe assured her that, while the entire rest of the Resistance gossiped like fiends, the doctors took their patients’ trust very seriously indeed – and Rey almost believed him.

 

Luke had insisted on an hour’s meditation. Rey had almost been grateful for the chance to sink into the Force and release everything but its flow, especially given that General Organa had insisted on joining them, and Rey found her a much easier model for meditation than Luke. She also had more useful suggestions for shields around large numbers of people than Luke did, possibly because her day-to-day job required her to deal with many people for weeks on end, and – unlike Luke - she couldn’t just claim Jedi business and hike away to the top of the nearest very tall building.

 

Rey had felt better, closing her eyes on the superficial world and immersing herself in the Force, visualising building layers of fine gauze fabric about herself to filter out the noise, like the cloth Rey had wrapped around herself to shield herself from sand and sun without trapping heat. General Organa had suggested the layered visualization to Rey, describing her own based on the layers of delicate chiffon that had made up her dresses as an Alderaanian princess, and it worked better than any other Rey had tried so far. Although Rey suspected that General Organa’s ballgowns had been a lot prettier than the lengths of cloth she bought at Niima Outpost and the desert woman taught her to wrap. Either way, she could build those layers of shielding comparatively easily now, light and simple, good for keeping out people who meant her no harm, but were putting too much pressure on her.

 

Now Rey was back in her bunkroom with Poe and Finn, the containers from the food Finn had wheedled from the mess stuffed into a corner and the top lights out, BB-8’s charging lights slowly blinking their comforting beacon. The moon filtered softly through the vines over their small window, Poe’s pale yellow light crystal shone from the shelf above his bed, Finn was snoring with a soft, even regularity that Rey sort of liked, and Rey couldn’t sleep.

 

 _It doesn’t matter_ , General Organa said in Rey’s mind, her soft brown eyes sharp and kind and ruthless. _Unless it helps us find your family. Then it matters._

Rey sat up in bed and scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. There was a moment’s perfect silence, and then a rustle as Poe turned over on the top bunk.

 

“Rey?” he said, voice soft but carrying. “You okay?”

 

“No,” Rey whispered. “I don’t think so. Not really.”

 

Poe climbed down the ladder quiet as a dormouse, and crept across the room to sit on the foot of her bed, narrowly missing her toes. “Tell me?”

 

Rey hesitated, and then decided to trust him with this, too. “I gave up on my family,” she whispered. “Maz Kanata… she told me they were never coming back. That what I was looking for was ahead of me, not behind, and I – and I –” Her voice felt trapped, like a stuck holo juddering on the same few seconds of play. “Everything happened. Takodana. The First Order. Starkiller. Luke. I just… I suppose I just thought… I couldn’t go back to Jakku… I kept putting it off. And now I think – I think Maz was right…”

 

She fell silent. Poe said nothing, his dark eyes warm and understanding in the faint moonlight.

 

“Nobody else ever cared about finding my family before,” Rey whispered. “The only person it mattered to was me. I didn’t mean anything to anyone else.”

 

Poe held his arms out to her. Awkwardly, she shuffled forward and pressed herself into his embrace; he gave hugs almost as good as Finn’s, and the way his fingers carded through her hair was very soothing.

 

“Welcome home, Rey,” he said very quietly, and held onto her while she clung to him for a few seconds, then gently disengaged. “Come on. We have some bedding to shift.”

 

Five minutes later, sleep-sheets, mattresses, pillows and one extremely confused Finn – who had nearly stabbed Rey with the vibroblade he blessedly hadn’t got when woken suddenly – were all piled on the floor. Poe’s light had been moved down to sit on top of Finn’s upturned crate, and Finn’s specialist mattress was carefully positioned for maximum support.

 

“What’s this for?” Rey asked, staring down at the floor.

 

“It’s so you know you’re not alone,” Poe said, leaving a nice large space in the middle between him and Finn.

 

Rey opened her mouth and closed it again.

 

“Oh,” Finn said, eyes sparking like he’d got the point, and held a hand out to Rey. She took it, and he pulled her down into the pile of bedding between him and Poe with an easy strength that Rey didn’t even think to counter because it was _Finn_ , and which made her feel a little strange in a good way, electricity dancing in the pit of her stomach.

 

Rey turned onto her side facing him, and almost panicked that Poe would think she was leaving him out, but Poe simply turned onto his opposite side, his back inches from hers, radiating warmth.

 

“See?” Poe said, sounding pleased, and maybe he could tell she was less tense the way she could feel it, lying so close to her.

 

“Good?” Finn asked, a little anxious.

 

“Yes,” Rey said, answering both of them, and tucked her hand into Finn’s and closed her eyes.

 

Sleep came much more easily when she knew she wasn’t alone.


	3. Chapter 3

_The first time Rey is truly angry - not merely sad, or frustrated, or so hungry she snaps, but burning with a rage that turns her eyes to the sun and her hands to claws, draws her lips back over her teeth - she is nine, and another young scavenger, one who has not learned to respect her territory, has stolen part of her haul. Rey does not have enough to buy her evening meal._

_The other scavenger will not even admit he stole, which is wise, because thieves suffer in Niima Outpost; but Rey cannot help the way this stokes her anger. Rey screams and strikes out; he bleeds, and the other scavengers in Plutt's workshop, those who are too young or too sick or too old to go out into the wreckage fields, shrink from Rey. There is something about the way she burns that they fear._

_Some part of Rey thinks that that is wise too, even though she does not want to be feared._

_Rey sleeps outside that night. The other scavengers will not have her in the shelter. She is hungry and cold, and the injustice of it makes her want to cry, even though she knows there is no such thing as justice on Jakku._

_The desert woman gathers her up with gentle hands, but her face is stern._

_I know, Rey sobs. I know it was wrong. But he stole from me, and I was angry -_

_Why? the desert woman asks. She runs her hands down Rey's arms, shoulders to elbow. Why? We cannot follow our emotions blindly, my loved one. We have to know where they lead us._

_Rey wipes her eyes. Because - it was mine, she said. My work, and I needed it, for food. He stole my food because he stole my salvage, and I need food to live._

_That's a good reason to be angry, the desert woman said. Did you control your anger? Did you understand it?_

_Rey's head droops. No, she says._

_The desert woman takes gentle hold of her chin and lifts Rey's tear-soaked face. That wasn't clever, my loved one, she says softly. You must think about what you feel, and understand it. And then you can act on it._

_Rey sniffles, and falls forward into the desert woman's arms. I will, she promises, and then she says: I hurt him. That was wrong._

_The desert woman's hand strokes lightly over her hair, a blessing, absolution._

_What would have been better? the dream woman asks._

_Rey considers. I could have taken my salvage back, she says. I could mark my salvage to prove it was mine._

_Why not? the desert woman says._

_I'll do that, Rey says. Next time. She snuggles closer to the desert woman, wrapping her skinny arms around her protector's chest. And I won't hurt anyone who doesn't attack me._

_The desert woman kisses the side of her head and draws Rey onto her lap. And?_

_And I'll think about why I feel things, Rey finishes. When I'm sad. Or angry. Or scared._

_Good girl, the desert woman says, rubbing a circle on her back. You are strong, my loved one, and that's a good thing. But strength used without wisdom is... destructive. It's a waste._

_That makes me sad, Rey says, what you said. It makes me sad. She wipes at her eyes again. There are worried tears springing up in the corners._

_Why?_

_Because I want you to be proud of me, my blood, Rey says. She's too big to seek comfort like this, but curled up on the desert woman's lap she feels safer and more loved than she ever remembers being._

_I am, my loved one, the desert woman says. She rocks Rey a little, back and forth. I will be._

_Rey curls her hand tightly into the desert woman's dress, and savours every minute of this._

 

***

 

 

The DNA test came back overnight – it would have been faster if there hadn’t been other tests to run, and if it hadn’t been necessary to cross-compare so many samples. Rey had insisted that her DNA test wasn’t a priority; General Organa had narrowed her eyes and decreed that the results would appear the next day, the kind of compromise that wasn’t open for debate. Major Kalonia had looked faintly unamused by this commandeering of the medical bay’s timetables, but the medical droid had uttered a metallic agreement, so Rey received the results of her test on her datapad exactly twenty-four hours later, along with a message from General Organa that if she wanted to talk about them she should feel free to come to General Organa’s office.

 

Rey had just finished a lightsaber lesson with Luke when her datapad beeped insistently. She ran her eyes slowly over the message from the medical bay, and quickly realised she would not be reading it without help.

  
“I can’t read it,” she told Luke, “It’s too –” she waved the hand that wasn’t holding the datapad helplessly.

 

“Would you like me to help?” Luke offered. He was watching her carefully, one hand still folded over his lightsaber, and Rey could feel a curious sympathy from him.

 

 _Luke always wanted to_ _know_ , General Organa had said.

 

“No,” Rey said, and then winced. “I mean – it’s not that I – Poe’s teaching me to read, he’ll help me.”

 

Luke nodded, smiling faintly.

 

“You get a copy of the results anyway, I think,” Rey said.

 

“I probably do,” Luke agreed tranquilly, and settled himself down on a rocky outcrop, arranging his robes around him. “But I already know the truth. I will be here when you’ve spoken with your friends.”  


Rey nodded uncertainly, and then trotted off towards the X-wing hangars. She had never tried to find Poe with the Force, knowing from what Finn said that Kylo Ren had made a bigger mess of his head than of Rey’s, and that any attempts to find his mind with her own would be taken amiss. Finn, though, was endlessly fascinated by Rey’s ability to find him in the Force, and had spent several hours playing an extended game of hide and seek to see what limits her skills had. So far, they didn’t have any. She could find him anywhere on the base. Finn thought this had great tactical potential; Rey mostly thought that it was simpler than having to search the entire base for him every time she wanted to talk to him. Right now, she could feel him glowing quietly in the Force, and from her mental map of the base it seemed like he was probably either in the X-wing hangar closest to her or…

 

Rey reached the hangar and found that Black One was just outside the hangar, and that she had been correct in assuming Finn was close by. She had also been correct in assuming that a Finn in the X-wing hangars was a Finn accompanied by Poe: Poe was currently head-down in an open panel, covered in black grease, with BB-8 rolling idle helixes around the landing gear and making smart remarks in Binary, while Finn handed Poe all the wrong tools.

 

“That’s not a torque wrench,” Rey called, hurrying over. “No, the other one –”

 

Finn spun on his heel and beamed at her: she beamed back. “Rey!”

 

She hugged him and removed the incorrect wrench from his hand. She had a strong suspicion she knew what Poe was tinkering with, and if he tried to use that wrench, he’d break something.

 

“It has red tape around the handle,” Poe contributed, from halfway inside the coolant tank, and then reappeared.

 

Rey picked up the right wrench and passed it to Finn; Finn weighed it in his hand and raised one dark eyebrow at it. “You could just have said it had red tape on.”

 

“Sorry, buddy.” Poe reached out for the torque wrench, and Finn leaned up and handed it to him.

 

“I need some help reading something,” Rey said.

 

“Down in a minute,” Poe said, somewhat indistinctly, from inside the panel.

 

Rey gave the datapad to Finn instead. Finn read fluently in every alphabet the First Order deemed useful, which was three more than Rey had ever been taught, and he plainly had no trouble following it. He handed it back to Rey.

 

“It’s nothing we didn’t find out yesterday,” he assured her.

 

“Yes,” she said, “but I want to know how to read it.”

 

Finn nodded seriously, as if he had assumed that that would be the case. There was a thud and a mechanical squawk from BB-8 as Poe dropped from the X-wing and nearly hit the droid, and then Poe came over, wiping his hands on a rag. “What is it?”

 

“Yesterday’s tests,” Rey said. “I know it doesn’t say anything new. Finn told me. I just want to know how to read it. I can’t follow a lot of those words.”

 

“Probably technical vocab,” Poe said comfortably.

 

“Can you help me -?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Poe said, and Finn nodded and smiled at her.

 

 

Rey kept the annotated copy of the results in her datapad, bookmarked on the screen so she could reach it with a tap. If she found the family who had left her again, it would be simple to get a comparative readout, and if she didn’t, she would still have this to look at. This proof of an anchor – this fine, fine line, tying her to other people who existed, proving that she had had a family, once, a family with names and relatives… It was something.

 

“You should feel free to use the Skywalker name,” Luke said suddenly, in the middle of a meditation session.

 

Rey dropped abruptly out of the comforting cradle of the Force.

 

“Should you be in need of a second name,” Luke clarified. “I know Finn is using Rook.”  


“He said Rook was for defectors,” Rey said. “That’s… it’s different, it’s not the same as me. Not worse than me,” she added, hurriedly. Finn still sometimes got sideways looks around the base; Rey tried to look out for him, but Finn was determined to prove himself to everyone in the Resistance on his own terms. “Better, I think. Finn had to be braver than I did, to walk away from the _Finalizer_ , I just got swept up by… events.”

 

“As I did,” Luke said peaceably. “Thirty-five years ago. In any case, I understand what you mean.” He tweaked his robe absently. “Well, if you need a second name for any reason, the offer is there. Until you find out which one you were given at birth.”

 

“Thanks,” Rey said quietly.

 

She reached out for the Force and let it flow through her.

 

 _Skywalker_ , she thought, as she carefully, consciously emptied her mind. _It might fit._

 

The Force felt like the desert woman’s hands, smoothing over her shoulders.

 

***

 

The first real mission Rey got to take part in was as much search and rescue as it was anything else; she'd offered her services for anything she could do, but General Organa had held her hand, saying that she wanted Rey to concentrate on her training, until a midnight summons caught everyone by surprise.  A small Resistance-affiliated colony, hiding out on a tiny, barren planetoid in the middle of nowhere, had been found by a First Order scouting party that got lucky; unfortunately for the planetoid’s occupants, a ship which had recently passed through Resistance hands and wasn’t clean yet had been on the surface at the time.

 

Some of the occupants might be alive, Finn said, briefing Rey at a run as they scrambled for the shuttles that were supposed to answer the resulting distress call. While the flight team who were currently carrying out an initial recce had described the planetoid as looking pretty blasted, and the planetoid’s geology was such that it was hostile to most generic life-form detectors, there was nonetheless a chance that not everyone had been killed when the First Order moved in. And it was plainly necessary to evacuate any remaining civilians.

 

Rey tumbled into the nearest shuttle with an open bay alongside Finn and strapped herself in. They were not the last into the shuttle, but it was already half-full with fighters and a couple of medics up at the front, running over their kit with tense faces. It was the middle of the night outside, but the hangars were glaring with floodlights and echoing with shouts and running footsteps.

 

“May the Force be with us,” one of the Resistance fighters remarked, nodding at Rey. His sideways grin, turned crooked by a vibroblade scar that cut deeply into one cheek, made Rey smile back at him: half the time when people said that to her they looked like they were about to start praying to her, and Rey had not come to terms with that yet.

 

“I thought that was your jacket, Rook,” remarked another fighter.

 

Rey clutched instinctively at the leather jacket she’d grabbed when Finn came to get her – Finn sometimes kept peculiar hours as an aide to General Organa now, and had come piling into the room where Poe and Rey were both asleep with such violence that Rey hadn’t stopped to think before shoving her feet into familiar boots, seizing her jacket and lightsaber and Han’s blaster. Her selection of clothes had been more or less random, and she was quite pleased she hadn’t just run for it in her pyjamas. She’d come away without a commlink or a message for Master Luke, which would annoy him when he rose in a few hours for lessons and she was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t see that there was anything wrong or surprising about what she was wearing. She and Poe and Finn wore the jacket interchangeably, and nobody had ever commented on it before.

 

Rey realised her boots were unlaced, and bent to tie them properly. They were different to the ones she’d worn on Jakku, which had given up the ghost not long after she’d left Ahch-To.

 

“It’s a shared jacket,” Finn said easily. He had his own, and was wearing it now – standard issue, as different from the battered brown leather jacket that had once been Poe’s as his trousers were from Rey’s leggings and tunic.

 

“Same as the shared droid?”

 

“BB-8’s independent-minded,” Finn said very seriously.

 

One of the medics let out a strangled snort. “I was working in the medical bay when you were out cold in there, Rook. There’s ‘independent-minded’ and there’s ‘actively interferes in patient care’.”

 

Finn looked slightly taken aback.

 

“I think Poe told her to look after you,” Rey said.

 

“That would explain it,” Finn agreed. Someone made a poorly stifled noise, the meaning of which Rey couldn’t parse; she looked around for the culprit, but whoever it was wasn’t visible in the stark shadows of the shuttle. She could just reach out with the Force to find out – and she knew some Jedi would have done – but after Kylo Ren, she had a violent distaste for that kind of behaviour. She kept overhearing Poe’s nightmares about Kylo Ren; she knew what kind of damage it could do.

 

The shuttle pilot yelled from up front that anyone who wasn’t strapped in was going to hit the ceiling in t-minus ten, and the shuttle bay door closed slowly and ominously.

 

 

The planetoid – which had a name mostly made up of numbers and letters, its burned-out settlement new and tentative with a half-shaped collective identity – was a mess. Rey had seen some terrible things on Jakku, but this… It was a small and bitter carnage, without the scale of a grand naval battle, or the broken destroyers on Jakku, where the respective vacuums of space and time had lent distance to every tiny tragedy within the greater one. This was just a home that someone had turned laser cannons on.

 

The land felt scarred. The air was thin and the ground gravel-hard, the sparkling shades of mica winking from it poor compensation for the scrawny vegetation and forbidding canyons and chasms of the ground, and the people who lived here had evidently been running off hydroponics just to get enough to eat. Rey pulled her lightsaber from her belt and laid her hand on the grip of Han’s blaster, prowling among the ruined hydroponics sheds as the Resistance’s fighters spread out amongst the buildings. The sheds had been cut to pieces, the plants withered and shriveled already, the water run into the thirsty ground like the lost lives Rey could feel all around her.

 

Many people had died here. The waste and cruelty of it stirred something in Rey that she thought she might have to discuss with Luke later – a bone-deep rage she hadn’t felt since she had floored Kylo Ren on Starkiller.

 

Rey came to a halt in front of a house which had taken significant fire, and was consequently missing most of its roof and two of its walls. She closed her eyes briefly, and immersed herself in the Force. She picked out Finn, glowing brightly in her unseeing sight, and a few of the fighters who she knew slightly. She identified, one by one, the lives of the Resistance members who had come to the planetoid; she stretched out and found Jessika, Iolo, Poe, Black Squadron carrying out flypasts of the planetoid, looking for hostiles and any lifesigns that might be visible despite the unhelpful geology.

 

 _Hello_ , Rey said silently, slipping into the current of the Force, letting it carry her. _Hello. Is anyone out there?_

 

All lives were equal in the Force, more or less. There was a certain baseline brightness that didn’t gutter out until you died. Some people were brighter than others; the seriously Force-sensitive blazed, like Luke or General Organa. Finn shone pretty fiercely himself, though Rey had never heard him acknowledge it. Still, unless you had one of those bright-blazing stars on your hands, it was easier to find the points of light in the Force that represented those you already knew. Those you’d met before, those you had spoken to, those you had feelings for. Rey was strong in the Force, but that was as true for her as it was for anyone else.

 

So it took a few moments for Rey to begin to pick up on the surviving settlers. She fixed the sense of them in her mind, and then opened her eyes. Finn was standing behind her shoulder, guarding her back, exactly where she had known he would be.

 

“This way,” Rey said, and as she picked her way through the rubble the search team formed up behind her.

 

It was eerily silent, and very dark. The dry phosphorescent lichen that clung to the rocks shone dimly as they walked into the canyons surrounding the settlement. Their headtorches picked out patches of dried blood: fallen splotches on the ground, a trail at hand-height.

 

Rey tried to broadcast reassurance, warmth, safety. It was unlikely that anyone Force-sensitive was alive here, but people who weren’t Force-sensitive might well pick up on the broadcast unconsciously. Few species were incapable of feeling the Force, and within the species that recognised it, very few individuals were totally unaffected by it.

 

Syla, scouting ahead, found a body half-tucked into an alcove; a boy, part Nautolan with noticeable dry patches on his head tresses from the waterless air, wearing sleep clothes soaked in blood. Rey reached for him, both with her hand and with the Force, but his life had dwindled into nothing hours ago. Probably one of his hearts had been struck; it was only surprising that he’d got this far.

 

Syla shook her head. Finn nodded grimly, and Rey kept walking.

 

The survivors had scattered into the nooks and crannies of the canyons in order to frustrate pursuit, although Finn said that he suspected the First Order hadn’t tried very hard to wipe out the entire community once they’d ruined the village. It would have been a waste of resources to winkle out every last person, and given that their sources of food were destroyed and the distress call to the Resistance had only got through by chance, the First Order patrol would have been justified in believing that there was no point.

 

Rey swallowed against the bile that rose in her throat at the thought, and coaxed a pair of twins who looked gutchurningly similar to the part-Nautolan boy out of the crack they had squeezed themselves into. Finn was having better luck with a small group in a cave nearby, but that was Finn for you. People looked into his eyes and trusted him.

 

One of the twins had a badly sprained ankle, very swollen and possibly slightly broken, and they refused to be separated. Rey carried them back to the village and settled them on a shuttle being flown by a good-natured, round-faced man whose name she couldn’t remember, but who had a seemingly infinite number of nieces and nephews and was far better with children than Rey. The twins took to him easily; he seemed to know exactly what to say and do.

 

 _When I was their age the desert woman was teaching me to tell edible plants from poisonous ones_ , Rey thought. _And how to use the poisonous ones to my own ends._

 

For the first time, that struck her as sad. She turned on her heel, tucked the jacket more securely around herself, and walked back into the village. A detail had started burying the bodies; Rey moved past them, found a spot where she would be out of the way, and reached out again, looking for the Force presence of any remaining survivors out in the canyons.

 

No-one.

 

Rey closed her eyes on the acid cruelty of that, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again.

 

A gangly teenager with several arms – one of them firmly attached to Finn, another half-covered in bacta patches; Rey smelt the scorching and cooked flesh of blasterfire that had only caught a glancing blow – was staring at her. They said something in a language Rey didn’t know, with a note of obvious surprise Rey recognised, and then corrected themselves in Galactic Basic.

 

“You glow,” they said.

 

“She’s just that brilliant,” Finn said, grinning easily at Rey.

 

Rey rolled her eyes at him and smiled.

 

“No,” said the teenager, tugging at the bottom of their dark green tunic with one restless hand. “You _glow_. Are you sick?”

 

“No,” Rey said, and looked at the teenager thoughtfully. “What’s your name?”

 

“Jas,” said the teenager.

 

Rey felt the way the Force eddied and swirled around Jas. They weren’t enormously strong with the Force, but there was certainly something there, something more than many people. Rey smiled again, and Finn gave her a meaningful look. There was something wondering in his eyes, Rey noticed. She’d seen it before, when Poe pulled off an exceptionally difficult manoeuvre, or she managed to hold her own in a practice match with Luke.

 

“Are you a Jedi?” Jas asked, half-awed, half-sceptical.

 

“Yes,” Rey said.  “What do you know about the Force?”

 

Jas rolled their eyes. “What does _everyone_ know? My dad –” They broke off suddenly, with a glance back at one of the scorched houses, increasingly visible in the pre-dawn greyness and the beams of the Resistance’s torches, and Finn winced.

 

“Come and sit with me,” Rey said hurriedly, “I’ll teach you how to meditate. And maybe later you might get to meet Luke Skywalker.”  


“He’s dead,” Jas said scornfully, “everyone knows that. Picked a fight with a giant Moraband serpent and lost. That was _years_ ago.”  


“Um,” Rey said. “Well. I saw him yesterday, so… I don’t think so.”

 

 

She taught Jas the basics of meditating – the young Besalisk found it difficult, and Rey was just impressed that they were able to try, under the circumstances – on the way back to base. There were fifteen survivors, mostly under the age of adulthood for their species; it would be a headache finding places for them to live, but it wasn’t really Rey’s headache, and there were few enough of them that for now the Resistance could accommodate them.

 

It was midday by the time Rey stumbled onto the tarmac to meet Luke, and, of course, it was raining again.

 

Luke looked at her sharply. “You’ve found a youngling.”

 

“They’re fourteen,” Rey said. “And they think you’re dead, incidentally.”

 

Luke’s eyebrows twitched. “Not when I last checked,” he said mildly.

 

Rey shrugged.

 

“Well,” Luke sighed. “That’s my problem, padawan. Not yours.” He peered into her eyes. “Go and get some sleep, you look half-dead.”

 

Rey nodded, and – after directing Luke to Jas – managed to stagger back to her room. Finn wasn’t there yet, probably debriefing with General Organa, but Poe was, sitting on Finn’s bunk and pulling his boots off.

 

“That was horrible,” Rey said.

 

“It reminded me of Tuanul,” Poe informed the floor.

 

Rey stared at him for a moment, and then seized the blankets and mattresses from the upper bunks and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor.

 

Poe blinked at her.

 

“Come on,” Rey said, feeling herself turn pink for no good reason. “No sense suffering in silence. I don’t feel good, either, and I bet Finn doesn’t.”

 

“No,” Poe agreed slowly, and then – Rey blessed herself – very slowly, he smiled.

 

***

 

_Will my family ever come back? Rey says to the desert woman, one night when she is ten, perhaps almost eleven; it can be difficult to pin down, since she doesn't know her birthday._

_There are a lot of stars in the sky, more than Rey knows, and she and the desert woman are ankle-deep in warm water. Rey has never seen so much water in one place in her life._

_My loved one, the desert woman says sadly, I do not know._

_Oh, Rey says, and then: They will. I'm sure they will._

_Then why did you ask me?_

_I don't know._

_The desert woman laughs, soft and low. My loved one. There is a family for you; I know there is._

_Thank you, my blood, Rey says._

_It's more of an answer than she expected_.


	4. Chapter 4

 

"Do you think you're fit for combat?" General Organa asked Rey, early one morning, not long after the search and rescue mission. She was sitting behind her desk, faint rays of sunlight playing over her silvered hair and the silver clasp of her olive-green shirt, and Luke was standing in the corner of her office, hands clasped behind his back, watching her.

 

"I can fight," Rey said, not sure she'd understood the question; surely the Resistance knew what she was capable of by now. She thought of Finn, throwing himself headfirst into the Intelligence work he'd been given, bringing everything he had to the least little task, and Poe, constantly ready to pay for freedom with his life. "I _want_ to fight."

 

"It's not the same," Luke said, plainly choosing his words with care. "I fought and hunted on Tatooine, Rey; there were always defence drills or culls. I'd killed. But none of that prepared me for the Battle of Yavin."

 

"Well, I'm not climbing into an X-wing to blow up a moon-sized cannon," Rey said reasonably, and darted a quick glance at General Organa. "Unless you want me to fly -"

 

General Organa was smiling. "Stick to the _Falcon_ ," she advised. "At least for the moment. And I'm not sending you anywhere by yourself; Luke is already going. This is merely a discussion as to whether you will go too."

 

"So -" Rey looked back at Luke. "I don't understand, General. What do you want me to do?"

 

The General sat back in her chair, folded her hands over her stomach, and looked at Luke.

 

Luke glared at her and sighed, turning his attention to Rey. "We have intelligence of an attack on an occupied moon near Bespin, which is one of our key supplies points and allies. Given the hyperspace lanes around it, the moon could be used as a strategic base to control a large part of that sector and blockade Bespin. What we also hear is that at least one Knight of Ren is expected to take part in the assault."

 

"This is a new tactic," General Organa added, drawing a datapad towards her. "The Knights of Ren have not seen much combat use before. We don't know what the First Order's strategic intentions in using them are - or if this is led by Snoke, rather than the less..." Her face twisted. "... supernatural military leadership."

 

"I'll go," Rey said. "Of course, I'll go."

 

Luke inhaled heavily. "Rey. You're hardly trained. You can choose not to do this; it might be better if you were to choose not to do this."

 

"Learning to be a better Jedi is also helping the Resistance," General Organa added. "Don't feel you have to do this." Her eyebrows twitched. "But I wanted to put the option on the table."

 

"I've seen what the Knights of Ren do," Rey said. She thought of Poe after bad nights, pale with shadows under his eyes, and the way Finn's scars clawed along his spine, and instinctively reined in her anger, acting on an old lesson: _think about what you feel_. "If there's anything I can do to help, I want to do it."

 

"Thank you, Rey," the General said firmly. There was a steady sincerity in her eyes that made Rey flush; it wasn't new to her to want to help people, but it was new to be thanked. On Jakku the person doing the thanking would fear the establishment of a debt; they'd curse you before they offered the slightest word of appreciation.

 

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose and stared pointedly at General Organa - or rather, given his position in the corner of a rather overstuffed room, at the back of her head.

 

"Don't look at me like that," General Organa said without missing a beat. "You can't tell me you were better prepared to face Vader. You forget I know all about the Death Star and Dagobah."

 

Rey looked at Luke. "Dagobah?"

 

"I'll tell you all about it while I'm making you practise with your lightsaber until your legs won't hold you up," Luke said darkly. "We have a week. It's not much, but it's something."

 

 

The journey to Bespin was a long one, even in hyperspace. Rey said goodbye to Finn and Poe, collected a kiss for luck from Finn, and boarded the transport to wait for several days while Luke programmed a practice remote to chase them both around a cargo bay and equally keyed-up Resistance fighters placed bets on their performance. Rey could feel herself improving - but she was glad she still had her staff, even if she wouldn't want to take on a Knight of Ren with it. The lightsaber still felt strange in her hand; as they practised, Luke talked to her about the theory and the practice of it as a weapon, the history he had managed to reconstruct, and told her of long-gone Jedi who had used lightsaber staffs. The possibilities made Rey dizzy.

 

So did the thought of a pitched battle, one where she wasn't trying to fend off a fellow scavenger or simply do enough damage to escape. Rey watched out of the narrow portholes as they dropped out of hyperspace, and wondered if the First Order already knew they were there.

 

 _You don't have to do this_ , Luke said, coming to stand beside her at the porthole.

 

 _Yes, I do_ , Rey answered shortly.

 

His hand landed lightly on her shoulder, covered by a dull brown shirt and protective vest, and squeezed. _You will not be alone_ , he said, and Rey felt the Force gather around them like a cloak, like a wave curling over the shore.

 

 

Afterwards Rey never remembered much of that battle. They were hidden on the surface of the moon before the First Order's troops arrived: conventional troops first, and then the shockwave of a Knight of Ren, throwing themselves against what they confidently expected to be a single padawan until Luke dropped his tight shields and attacked. Rey wasn't so good at concealing her presence yet, but here they could use that to their advantage.

 

The Knight, too, had a padawan of sorts. Rey could see it in the less fluid way the individual moved, the slight hesitance, the greater brutality and lesser finesse of the strikes.

 

"Hey," she yelled, across a battlefield that had once been a city's without-wall market square. " _Hey_! You!"

 

The Knight's apprentice turned towards her, their masked head tilted. They dropped the body of a Resistance soldier they'd been twisting; Rey slowed the man's fall and softened his landing with less than a thought.

 

Rey lifted her lightsaber and lit it up. The Knight's apprentice slashed the air idly with their own red saber. Troopers and Resistance fighters drew away.

 

"Come on, then," Rey said, and bared all her teeth.

 

 

Rey had killed her first sentient in self-defence when she was fourteen. It didn't feel so very different, killing the apprentice - except that when you snapped someone's neck there was no smell of burning. Rey gagged on the scent of her own wounds when a medic dressed the burn she'd picked up, and choked down mouthfuls of the victory feast (largely grilled) out of habit more than hunger.

 

Several people asked her to dance. Rey excused herself on the grounds of Jedi business, and climbed onto a flat-roofed building where she could sit nestled among the solar panels and watch other people dancing instead. She would have preferred to join the mechanics working overtime to get the Resistances' transports - damaged by the First Order in their bloody retreat - back in order, but thought her chances of being sent straight back to the party were far too high. She propped her hand on her fist, and watched the dancers. They all looked so alive; you couldn't see the medical outpost from here, and she was too high up for bandages to be immediately visible.

 

Luke created a slight diversion from this soothing pastime by leaping onto the roof in a single bound.

 

"I didn't know you could do that," Rey said.

 

"To tell the truth," Luke said, dusting off his robes, "I wasn't sure I could either, these days." He stretched and sighed. "I'm no Master Yoda."

 

"Master Yoda wasn't human," Rey said.

 

Luke proved that he was by hitting his shin on a solar panel in the darkness and swearing in Huttese. Rey stifled a wholly inappropriate giggle.

 

"Ah," Luke said gently, finding his way across the roof. "Feeling a little better?"

 

Rey looped her arms around her knees and stared at her feet. "I don't know," she said.

 

The apprentice had screamed, at the last. It hadn't sounded like any sentient Rey had ever heard.

 

"I would be surprised if you did know," Luke said, finally reaching here and sitting down in the trench between solar panels closest to her.

 

There was a long silence.

 

"Do you think you were ready?" Luke said finally.

 

Rey bit back an automatic defence of her choice to join the fight, and wrapped her arms more tightly around her bent knees. Her burned arm complained, but she ignored it.

 

"I think the answer to that question is always 'no'," she said. "How can you be ready for that?" She paused for a second, and rolled her lips together; they were dry, and the skin stretched uncomfortably. "I think I was less not-ready than most people would have been, though." She looked sideways at Luke. "Why? Were you ready?"

 

"For the Death Star?" Luke laughed very quietly, and shook his head. "No. There were half a million lives on that weapon, Rey. I took every last one."

 

"So," Rey said. She tucked her hands under the toes of her boots and rocked a little, back and forward. The dances below had turned to circle dances, which might have been easier for the revellers to follow if they'd been more sober. "So."

 

There was a long silence.

 

"I'm not sorry I killed the apprentice," Rey said at last. "But I wish there'd been another choice."

 

"That makes you a good person," Luke said. "That keeps you within the Light. You did what you had to do, but you seek a better way of doing it."

 

Rey said nothing.

 

"I'm very proud of you," Luke said. "I wish you hadn't had to do it. But you did it well."

 

Rey smiled.

 

So did Luke. Then he cleared his throat, and rearranged his robes about him. "Now put your Force-damned sling back on."

  
  


  


General Organa did not meet them off the transport to Lah'mu; she was too busy holding an urgent conference call with a number of influential Corellians who were still deciding whether to throw their weight behind the Resistance or not. Finn, meanwhile, had been dragged off to record testimony about the stormtrooper programme. He told stories about it, sometimes, that made the Resistance fall silent and Rey's stomach twist - she'd had no ordinary childhood, but she _knew_ some of the things Finn described were wrong - but this was different, official. The stories had to fit templates, to be told the same way, to be full of factual details that could be cross-checked.

 

Rey knew Finn appreciated the chance to do it, but standing on the tarmac carrying her kitbag with the Force instead of her bad shoulder and trying to see if anyone was waiting for her, Rey wished he'd been given some other time to do it. Any time.

 

There was a high-pitched, imperative whistling, and BB-8 nearly knocked Rey off her feet. Rey dodged, laughing a little, and felt rather than heard Luke walk up to stand behind her shoulder.

 

"I see your friends have sent you a message," he remarked, amused.

 

BB-8 revolved in very small tight circles and asked Luke what was so funny in Binary.

 

"Nothing," Rey said, running an affectionate hand over BB-8's dome. "Don't talk to Luke like that."

 

_Artoo does!_

 

"Artoo does all sorts of things," Rey said. "What did you come here to tell me?"

 

_Designation-Poe says he breaks for midday at the twelfth hour if you're hungry._

 

Rey checked her chronometer, experienced two brief moments of disorientation - firstly, that she now owned a chronometer, and secondly, that it was still set to the correct time on Bespin IX - and then asked BB-8 what time it was.

 

 _Eleven-fifty_ , BB-8 chirped, and rolled round Rey's ankles like she was trying to hurry her along.

 

Rey was surprised to realise she was hungry. She hadn't been very keen on her food over the last few days, eating out of mechanical habit rather than interest - helped by the presence of protein rations that closely mimicked the portions she'd traded for on Jakku - but now her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered.

 

Luke clapped her very lightly on her good shoulder. "Go and eat something with your friends," he said. "You'll feel better for it."

 

Rey smiled a little.

 

"I'll see you in a couple of hours," Luke said, and pointed a mock-stern finger at her. "This will _not_ get you out of your lessons."

 

Rey's smile widened. "Wouldn't dream of trying," she said. BB-8 bumped into the back of her ankles, and Rey nudged the little droid. "Stop that. I'm coming, I'm _coming_ -"

 

Luke's laughter chased her across the base to the X-wing hangars, where she found Poe sweating over paperwork in his tiny, poky office. Rey knocked at the half-opened door, and was rewarded with a blinding smile when Poe looked up.

 

"Hey, welcome back," he said easily, sitting back in his chair.

 

Rey gave him a lopsided smile in return for his bright one, and sidled into his office, leaning against the desk next to his chair. Her bag bobbed behind her, but Poe didn't give it so much as an uneasy glance.

 

"You okay?" Poe said, and nodded at her sling. "Looks like you got a bit burnt."

 

"It's nothing," Rey said, and meant it. She'd worked through worse.

 

Poe gave her a contemplative look. Then he smiled very gently. "I hear you did well."

 

Rey shrugged uncomfortably.

 

Poe nudged her arm, then held out an arm to her for a one-sided hug. She turned into the embrace, leaning her cheek against the top of his head, and stayed there for a bit, listening to both of them breathe. She felt... contemplative. She felt like it was safe to be contemplative, here. To be... not unaffected by what she'd done.

 

Luke had been right: it was different. For one thing, Rey had never consciously realised that she could feel people die. The desert woman had never told her about that; Rey had never asked.

 

"Is Finn going to be stuck much longer?" she asked, voice slightly muffled. "Can we get lunch with him?"

 

"Already sorted out," Poe promised.

 

"Thanks," Rey said quietly, and did not let go.

 

 

***

 

Rey had, at some point, asked Luke what they were doing. He hadn’t answered, preserving that infuriating peaceful silence she knew she had absolutely no chance of breaking; moffs and senators and admirals and all sorts of other exalted people largely irrelevant to Rey’s life had tried and failed. So she just kept following him, walking over the planet’s rocky surface as the day twisted into brightness. For once, it wasn’t raining, but Rey had no faith in that.

 

“We could just have taken a speeder,” Rey said, several hours in, when they stopped to eat. The sky really was beautiful like this, and as they were now into the foothills of the dark grey mountains, they were in a nice spot for appreciating it.

 

“That would not be the point,” Luke said, looking completely refreshed despite several hours of brisk walking on dubious terrain. The shale that slid down from the mountains was tricky, and there were no obvious safe paths. Rey had spent a lot of time muttering ‘trust the Force’ to herself.

 

Rey took a gulp of water, and rolled her eyes at him the way Jas had done before the young Besalisk had been sent to a safe, undisclosed Outer Rim location. (Nobody had confirmed it for Rey, but Rey suspected, that there were still Force-users left alive in the galaxy who Kylo Ren had not managed to kill off – and Jas, plainly too young and unsuitable for a military role, had gone to join them.) Jas had demanded holo updates on their welfare, but – given the constraints involved - these were plainly not going to be frequent or truthful.

 

“You’re picking up bad habits,” Luke said imperviously.

 

“I am one giant bad habit,” Rey corrected him. Jas had only spent two weeks with them, but had decided in that period of time that Rey and Finn – who they preferred not to let out of their sight if possible – were poorly socialised and badly brought up, and required remedial parenting. Poe, who had been exempted from Jas’s strictures on the grounds that he understood having friends and could hold eating utensils correctly, had been rendered helpless with laughter. General Organa had been observed to grin, for which Rey and Finn could forgive Jas anything.

 

Luke’s mouth twitched. “Jas is irrepressible, and - if their hosts can persuade them to stop trying to make everything in a two-parsec radius their responsibility - will make a fine Jedi.”

 

Rey smiled, and kicked her feet against the rock promontory she was sitting on. “Anyway. I’ve been rolling my eyes at you for months.”

 

“Fine Skywalker family trait, the eyeroll,” Luke said, leaning back against a rock and closing his eyes, tilting his face up into the pale sunshine. “Passed down from –“

 

Rey bounced a fruit stone off his shoulder.

 

“-ow!”

 

“What are we doing?” Rey asked, for the hundredth time. “What’s the point? I promised the ground crew I’d help out with the X-wings, and Threepio still needs that arm replacing, and there’s some tech work I’m supposed to be helping with, and drills -”

 

“It is not your job,” Luke said, gently, but in the master-Jedi voice that cut through everything Rey might have said and made her feel like she was whining, “to carry out the Resistance’s mechanical maintenance. You’re a padawan. You’re training to be a Jedi.” He squinted up into the sky. “I know, from personal experience, that it’s difficult to remember to take time for your own training in the middle of a war. After all, there are so many things that seem more urgent. Things to be mended. Patrols to be flown.” A grimace passed across his face. “Paperwork to be done. Although, in fairness, I think I can safely say I never neglected my training for the delights of requisition forms.”

 

Rey smiled, because she was meant to; but it slipped off her face quickly. She was thinking about Luke thirty years ago, her own age, deprived of any meaningful, day-to-day guidance in the ways of the Force by Obi-Wan’s death. Luke, as a pilot, had had a far more active role in the Rebellion than Rey did as a trainee Jedi, occasional fighter and conveniently accessible mechanic. And he’d had no teacher to take him aside and say _stop: wait_.  
  


 

It was no surprise that he had been reluctant to allow her into the increasingly frequent, increasingly concrete briefings on the activities of the Knights of Ren - or that he was wary of allowing her to take a direct combat role to fight the waves of fear, demoralisation and mind control the Knights specialised in. Rey understood his reasoning, which had been very carefully explained, even though it chafed at her. Rey thought there would probably be a good reason for this excursion, too. Once she'd winkled it out of him.

 

“Of course, I ended up running away to another planet to solve the problem,” Luke said thoughtfully. “I needed a teacher. But you have a teacher right here, and if either of us runs off, Leia will kill us both.”

 

Rey slapped her pack, laid down on the rock beside her. “Is that why we’re only carrying supplies for a day?”

 

“Absolutely. Leia will send young Dameron and half of Black Squadron out looking for us if we’re not back before moonsrise.” Luke grinned at his own joke, and then said more seriously: “So – you tell me why we’re here, Rey.”

 

Rey thought for a moment, and then said, rather hesitantly: “To feel the Force. It’s… noisy, on the base, and that noise is – is part of the Force, and I need to learn to cope with it, but it makes me… closed-in.” She thought for another second longer, and then added: “Short-range. Short-term. Because I’m always thinking about what I can do for the Resistance, and I forget about what I need to do to be a Jedi.” She remembered her carefully blocked-out spaces of time for small kinetic exercises and sparring, and the meditation she managed to do most days, and finished conscientiously – “I mean, what I need to do in the long term. Lightsaber practice and things like that are… different.”

 

It was true. She had made time to talk to Luke about her anger at the destruction of Jas’s home, and they had discussed it extensively. Rey had found that both helpful and reassuring. She didn’t fear falling to Kylo Ren’s kind of darkness, the cruelties the Knights of Ren perpetrated just for the joy of giving pain felt alien to her, but she knew from painful noonday experience that light could be blinding too, and she worried that no-one but General Organa or Luke would be able stop her if she turned to cruelty through being too secure in her own righteousness. She had even wondered, once or twice, whether it would be better to ask Poe or Finn to shoot her if she fell in that sense. She thought Poe would be more likely to be able to do it without hesitating – not because he didn’t care about her, but because he knew the consequences of a lost Jedi better than Finn did.

 

One of the smallest painful things Rey had discovered since joining the Resistance full-time was that Poe and Kylo Ren were much the same age, and that Ben Organa had been an awkward, difficult, precocious and troubled boy – capable of great sweetness and sincerity, when he didn’t trip over his own feet, or retreat into his own wounded sensibilities. Poe had known a Ben who would calculate all your hyperspace routes for you, or casually pick up your favourite sweets for you, and then lash out at you and refuse to speak to you for weeks if you said the wrong words. As far as Rey knew, the older Ben had got, the less of the sweetness had survived.

 

Luke was nodding, and Rey spared a moment to be pleased with herself. “My teachers told me that my lightsaber was my life. That it was what it meant to be a Jedi. That’s not the case. You can use a lightsaber as a metaphor for using the Force, and a lightsaber is certainly much easier to use with the Force – there’s a reason it’s a Jedi’s weapon – but being a Jedi is not about being a weapon. The weapon is usable because you are a Jedi. You are not a Jedi because you use the weapon.”

 

Rey nodded to show she was listening, filing this away for future reference and possibly meditation, and Luke smiled at her.

 

“So,” Rey said. “Hiking to get in touch with the Force.”

 

“As it manifests on this planet,” Luke agreed, and got to his feet.

 

 

Lah’mu had always seemed devoid of life to Rey in a way the desert never had, simply because Rey’s eyes were attuned to the creatures that scraped a living out of Jakku’s deserts. There was abundant vegetation and some wildlife, but mostly it was shy. There were a lot of mountain goats, Rey understood from people who had flown over them – Rey had been living here for months now and had never seen one in person – and over the course of the morning, she had spotted some bird life and a lot of weird looking little creatures that seemed like the desert lizards she knew but plainly weren’t, not to mention the small and fluffy animals Iolo called hyraxes. The hyraxes weren’t scared of anything, and their piercing calls were some of the most annoying sounds Rey had ever heard.

 

Now, with her second senses turned on and turned up, Rey could hear all kinds of small creatures, moving obliviously through the eddies of the Force. Their lives beat in time with its greater pulse without their ever even knowing it, and when she listened carefully she knew that her own did too. It was sometimes difficult to maintain her awareness of them and stop herself falling over her own feet on the tricky ground: they were cutting across the foothills now, not walking up into the mountains, which were cold and hazardous and which Rey viewed with distrust. Kaydel Ko Connix assured her that mountains were beautiful, but Rey had yet to see evidence of it.

 

Rey couldn't feel any people at all, except those at the Resistance base, now several miles behind them.

 

"Are there people on Lah'mu?" she asked. "I mean, on the rest of Lah'mu."

 

Luke nodded. "There's a larger community on a continent on the other side of Lah'mu, but they haven't got much in the way of sophisticated technology. They don't know we're here. There are a few people who live about a thousand miles north of us, at the other end and on the other side of this mountain range, and there used to be a few scattered farms around here, but not for a long time."

 

"Why?" They started walking downhill; Rey slipped and steadied herself with the Force.

 

"Leia asked, when she asked permission for the Resistance to settle here. Formal permission, I mean - Lah'mu was one of several planets on a list." A fond smile creased Luke's face. "She always has a list. Comes of all the times the Rebellion needed to evacuate in a hurry. Anyway - when she asked the Gamot, the council of landowners, they told her that about fifty years ago the Empire wiped out all the farms south of the Great Divide and ruined the crop stores in the northern population centre." Luke's lips pressed together. "Nobody told them why, of course."

 

Rey was silent for a moment, thinking. "Was it a Rebellion planet? I mean..."

 

Luke was shaking his head. "Ask Leia; she knows the early history far better than I do. Her father - and our biological mother - was a founding member of the Rebellion. But fifty years ago the Rebellion was little more than an illicit bank account and some disaffected senators with extra-senatorial power bases. It certainly hadn't made it out this far into the Outer Rim. The Empire itself barely made it out this far into the Outer Rim." He waved illustratively at the slopes, and a green plateau far below, as Rey rounded a corner slightly ahead of him.

 

She squinted down. At the bottom of the hill they were on, maybe two or three miles further on horizontally, there were shapes that were too regular to be natural. She couldn't see people moving and she couldn't sense them.

 

"Is that a farm?" Rey asked, hearing doubt in her own voice.

 

Luke peered into the distance. "Maybe it was, once." His forehead creased. "No-one's there."

 

Rey shook her head.

 

Luke looked around, let out a satisfied sigh - whether at how far they'd managed to get from the base or at the beauty of the view, Rey didn't know - and suggested stopping for lunch while it was still dry. The misty grey clouds rolling in were objectively beautiful, but Rey could imagine the drenching rain they would bring with them. She agreed, and listened deceptively closely while Luke (in between mouthfuls of ration bars) told her bits and pieces of Jedi history and lore, often dropping them into conversation as apparently tangential remarks. Rey stored them up, keeping a careful ear for connections and themes. Luke liked delivering some of his lessons in a slightly sideways fashion: the true lesson often lay in the process of sifting the lesson’s point from its delivery.

 

They finished their lunch just as the first drops of rain were starting to fall, and then got back on the move, heading down into the valley below. Rey was grateful for her boots, which had a sturdy sole that gripped the ground far better than her old ones; she wondered how the hell they were going to walk back if it got really wet and the paths became slippery, and resolved to call Chewbacca or Finn or Poe for a lift if necessary.

 

By the time they were down in the valley and walking up to the ruined building, it was raining heavily. Rey had pulled the hood of her poncho up earlier, but her face, her padawan braid and tendrils of her hair were still wet, the wind blowing the water into her eyes. She squinted against it, and felt glad of her layers.

 

Luke, of course, looked totally impervious. He was examining some kind of rusted metal structure that looked as if it had once stood tall in a line of others; only one was now standing, though Rey could see the broken skeletons of others among the knee-high green vegetation, and that last one was snapped in half. It must have been taller than Rey, once.

 

The concrete building Rey had noticed from their lunchtime perch looked as if time had eaten at it more than violence. The structure was stable, but overgrown. The protective lacquer on the door had chipped away with time, and the door itself rusted. Rey's Force senses told her its weak points, when she touched it and shut her eyes. She listened, and heard nothing living except for some of the not-lizards with their leathery backs, which had made a nest down below.

 

"Fifty years ago," Luke mused, joining her by the door.

 

"Something happened here," Rey said.

 

Luke nodded. He was fiddling with something small and plastic-sounding, hidden in one hand. "I'm inclined to agree. But whatever it was, the Force swept it away many years ago." He looked around, at the abandoned machinery and the building crumbling at the edges.

 

"Should we... go and look?" Rey asked, feeling awkward. She knew exactly where to push to make the door collapse into reddish fragments.

 

Luke shook his head. "No. Let the dead lie still."

 

Rey nodded, and pulled her fingertips away from the door. Flakes of rust stuck to them; she wiped her hand on her leggings. "What have you got there?"

 

"Parts of a doll, I think." Luke showed them to her, cupped in his hand like worry beads. They were white, plastic, as Rey had thought, and had once been smooth, but were now cracked and stained. A leg and an arm, maybe. "Fifty years ago, children had stormtrooper dolls."

 

Rey stared at them and then looked at Luke. "Are they important?"

 

"No," Luke said. "On the contrary. These are insignificant." He fell silent, and rolled the doll parts in his palm.

 

Rey waited.

 

"Insignificant isn't always meaningful," Luke said slowly, "as a description. Apparently insignificant actions can change the galaxy. From some point of view, we are all insignificant."

 

Rey let her eyes stray into the middle distance and thought - in no particular order - of a farm boy on Tatooine, a girl politician in a meaningless senate, a Wookiee alone carrying out repairs in the middle of nowhere, a smuggler in a cantina, a single fighter pilot, a stormtrooper like all the other stormtroopers, and a scavenger among many scavengers.

 

 _From some point of view, we are all insignificant_ , she repeated to herself, and from somewhere deep inside her an answer drifted to the surface of the Force. _What does your heart tell you?_

 

Luke glanced at her, and she realised she'd said that out loud.

 

"That the reverse is also true. From some point of view, we are all significant," Luke replied. "Where did that come from?"

 

Rey shrugged uneasily. She hadn't told Luke about the desert woman yet, and she wasn't totally sure that that was one of the desert woman's sayings anyway. She just knew it, like she knew her hands and heart.

 

The rain intensified. Luke wrinkled his nose.

 

"Let's find some shelter," he said. "There are caves in these mountains. If it doesn't ease off soon, we should call Chewie or your friends for a lift; the paths will be very bad, in this weather."

 

He tucked the doll pieces into his pocket, and led Rey around the corner of the abandoned building.  
  


  


Sitting under a slightly inadequate rock shelter, uncomfortable among the moss and uneven stones, they shared their remaining ration bars and waited as the rain sheeted down, cold silver drowning the abandoned farmhouse. The clouds rolled over them, lightning spiked, and Luke told her about the Dark Force-users he had mopped up, after the end of the Galactic Civil War. In his telling, most of them were half-broken, warped by the Emperor and then twisted to ruination by the disappearance of that malevolent scaffolding. From what he said, he had not been able to salvage much. Rey wondered how many people besides him had wanted to try.

 

When the rain had slacked off a bit, Rey picked up a call on the radio.

 

"Another one," it said, through broken static: "Knights - another one -"

 

Rey curled her fists. From some point of view, each of the Knights was insignificant - ghosts, untraceable, without family or history that Resistance Intelligence had yet managed to name. But they did a lot of damage, for something insignificant.

 

"Well then," Luke said calmly as he stood, with a slight grunt and mild complaint about his knees. "I suppose it was too good to last."


	5. Chapter 5

_One of the first lessons the desert woman teaches her is that knowledge is power; that knowledge means survival. Rey learns, and learns quickly. More and more, the desert woman asks her about the lessons she has bought or bartered for outside this dream space they live in. Rey tells her about conversations in other languages while she stumbles over unfamiliar verbs, bargaining for sight of an old droid manual, buying a cut-down staff and learning to wield it._

_The woman at the market said I should know, Rey says when she tells the desert woman about the staff. The desert woman looks a little troubled, a little grim, in a way she usually does not._

_She is right, my loved one, says the desert woman. I wish she was not. She pulls Rey close and strokes her hair in a way she has not since Rey was ten, and asked after her family again. The desert woman never answers those questions._

_Rey clings to her. She knows this is not real, but it feels real._

_What shall I teach you tonight? says the desert woman. It is not really a question this time. I shall teach you how to know when people mean you harm._

_I can often tell, Rey says. When something bad's about to happen. It's like the way the air feels, before a sandstorm comes. Or a thunderstorm._

_Rey has only ever seen one thunderstorm, but the heavy electric feel of the air and the rolling threat of the clouds had frightened her as much as it had fascinated her; she had been extremely wary of the group of smugglers who had come into Niima Outpost looking for parts days later, because they had felt like the storm. And she had been right; they had gone suddenly one night, and left a knife between Thukja's twisted ribs as their only payment._

_A useful skill, my loved one, the desert woman says, and again her smile is a little strained. But there are ways and ways of telling, and I am going to teach you all of them._

_Yes, my blood, Rey says, and listens._

 

 

***

 

“I wouldn’t send you,” General Organa concluded, leaning back in her chair and avoiding Luke’s heavy frown, “I don’t want to disrupt your training, but Yolandé wants to speak to a Jedi.” She grimaced. “And I can’t go to Coruscant.”

 

“I didn’t think the First Order controlled Coruscant,” Rey said, tentatively.

 

“They don’t,” General Organa answered, lips tight. She was toying with a ring she often wore, gold wire and rounded indigo stones. “Coruscant was – is, technically – part of the New Republic, governed by Coruscant City Council, with heavyweight representation in the Senate. However, we never managed to clear all the Imperial sympathisers out of Coruscant’s power bases, and there are always some whose response to trouble in the wider galaxy is Coruscant First. So Coruscant is functioning by itself right now, with no higher authority than the City Council, and while publicly they would never affiliate themselves with the First Order after the death of Wyman Qing, there are quarters where members of the First Order find a ready ear.” General Organa straightened, with a slight groan; Rey thought about Finn’s working patterns lately, and suspected that she hadn’t left her desk since the previous day. “And then, I suppose, there was the last assassination attempt, and the rumours that Lord Snoke would be interested in-" her eyebrows flicked upwards, sardonic - "discussing the Force with me personally. No. It wouldn’t be a very good idea for me to go to Coruscant.”

 

“ _Last_ assassination attempt,” Rey repeated, passing over the other half of the sentence; it was logical that Snoke saw General Organa as a special threat. Snoke had had his pet killer murder that killer's own father, simply for existing - the Force alone knew what potential he saw in the General, who shone in the Force like a sun too close to a hyperlane. And then there was Kylo Ren, who spoke of Vader like a saint or a sacrament: what did he think of his mother's blood?

 

Luke remained frowningly silent.

 

“I’ve had a target on my back since the day we were born, Rey,” General Organa said patiently, and then glanced at Luke. “Or before, depending on your point of view.”

 

 Luke huffed. “What is the point of this?”  


“The point is that I need someone to go and talk to Yolandé Naberrie,” General Organa said. “Yolandé Naberrie, who has extremely valuable information on First Order sympathisers among the major trading bodies in the galaxy and reads interplanetary stockmarkets like they’re _The Big Red Lothcat_. And the reason I want you and Rey to do it – or, more accurately, you and Rey and Lando Calrissian, and you can take Finn, I like his way with an intelligence briefing – is because Yolandé is a little Force-sensitive and favours the Jedi. And she’s still a bit dubious about the Resistance. She won’t trust anyone I might send normally.”

 

“Even after the Hosnian system?” Rey said, too shocked to stop herself.

 

General Organa closed her eyes briefly. “Our Naberrie cousins are an odd lot. They were closely watched under the Empire, and Yolandé was raised extremely cautious. She was more or less hidden from birth – not in plain sight, the way we were, just hidden and stifled – because to be visibly Force-sensitive under the Empire was to find yourself either dead or Vader’s apprentice. The Naberries have always put their faith in institutions. They trusted the New Republic to act. After the slaughter of the Hosnian system, they were of course very shocked, and I think you’ll find their shock has done our bank accounts a great deal of good, but Yolandé remains wary of getting involved with the Resistance itself, and she doesn’t like either me or Luke. I’m not sure why. I can never tell if she envies us or is frightened of us.” General Organa looked Rey dead in the eye. “So you can see why I want to know what it is that she knows, and why it’s so important that she actually got in touch.”

 

“This is inappropriate,” Luke said, oozing disapproval from every pore. “Rey and I are Jedi, not spies.”

 

“I know,” General Organa said, looking her twin square in the face. “Which is why Yolandé trusts you, if she doesn’t like you.”

 

“I can’t show my face on Coruscant, unless you want the _entire_ galaxy to know for sure that I’ve returned, which will make us all greater targets than we already are, given -" Luke's voice halted, and Rey looked away from the expression on his face - "Ren's Skywalker obsession -"

 

“You won’t,” General Organa said coolly. “Lando will. Lando, Chewie and the deckhand Han took on before his death. You can stay on board the Millennium Falcon. I simply know better than to send Rey to the other end of the galaxy without you.” General Organa’s eyebrows twitched. “She needs to continue her training, after all.”

 

Luke’s blue eyes flashed. “You can’t ask Rey –”

 

“General Organa doesn’t have to ask anyone,” Rey cut in, words tumbling from her mouth. “I’m offering. I _want_ to help.”

 

“Thank you, Rey,” General Organa said, more gently than she had spoken to Luke. “You should discuss it with Finn before you decide. He has all the briefings you might want to see.”

 

“We’re going to discuss this, Leia,” Luke said, without looking at Rey.   

 

 

Luke sulked all the way to Coruscant, which made Finn nervous and bothered Rey.  Lando and Chewbacca, apparently used to it, remained impervious. Chewbacca instructed Rey in everything he would have taught her if she’d accepted that job offer on Takodana nearly a year before, and Lando divided his time between teaching Rey to cheat at sabacc and giving Finn advanced lessons in the theory and practice of tracing money and goods through the black market.

 

Finn would not be coming with them to meet Yolandé. A smaller party was more unobtrusive, and General Organa considered that the fewer opportunities anyone got to make a note of Finn’s face the better, so Luke, Finn and Chewbacca would be remaining on board ship. Finn made Rey swear on his life to take note of anything that might be useful, backtracked to explain what he meant by ‘things that might be useful’, and then went back to drilling her in a false name and the details of her story. If anyone asked, she was Emi, a deckhand and mechanic born and brought up in Hastil IX, a space station anchored off Hastil in the Western Reaches. Han had hired her because she understood the modifications that had been made to the Falcon and wanted to get out of the Myro-Hastil system… which wasn’t so far from the truth.

 

Emi had never been outside the Western Reaches in her life, until Han had taken her on. He’d died of a heart attack. Emi didn’t understand his business dealings or Lando’s, she just knew that Lando employed her now, and Lando paid better. She’d never seen Coruscant before, which was why Lando had decided to bring her into the city.

 

Some of these things were more or less true, which made Rey feel a little better about the things which weren’t.

 

Finn made her practise answering to Emi and giving her name and story in a way that sounded plausible over and over again, and made her explain to him which pieces of the truth she was allowed to tell Yolandé and show him how she was going to hide her padawan braid and lightsaber.

 

“You’ll be fine,” Finn said, a worried crease between his eyebrows. “You’ll be fine. You’ll – you’re convincing, you’re calm, you can mind-trick your way out of anything if you really have to, and you’re with Lando. You’ll be fine.”

 

“You sound very convincing,” Rey said, and went to meditate with Luke. She took special care always to find time for meditation and other less tangible lessons, now, and for reading the documents and watching the holos Luke sent her about the history of the Jedi, the Sith and the Force; she was of the Resistance, now, but Luke’s words about the long-term work that went into being a Jedi rattled around her head as surely as the desert woman’s lessons ever had done.

 

Luke was unbending a little, now. Rey had overheard snippets of him talking with Lando – mostly about what Luke had been like as a young man, and making the decision to be a Jedi instead of Rogue Leader, and Rey’s right and ability to walk her own path – and thought that he was more comfortable now than he had been with her willingness to throw herself into the fight.

 

Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right, Rey thought, and stored that away for consideration later, when they weren’t an hour away from Coruscant.

 

She sat cross-legged opposite Luke in the legal cargo bay, and let herself sink into the Force, ground herself like the great statues Giallin had told her about, sunk into the sea-beds of Mon Cala. It was comfortingly familiar by now. Rey felt her own insignificance in the tides of the Force, and thought about what Luke had said outside the abandoned farm. _Insignificant is not meaningless_.

 

Rey was scared of leaving the Falcon and going to meet someone who sounded half-hostile to the Resistance and half-dazzled by the concept of being a Jedi – a combination that rendered Rey deeply uncomfortable. But she trusted Finn to have taught her what she needed to know, and she trusted General call-me-Lando Calrissian to manage the situation, and she trusted the Force. She felt anchored.

 

Maz Kanata’s words echoed in her head. _The belonging you seek is ahead of you._

 

Rey’s eyes opened at the same moment that Luke’s did.

 

“Who said that to you?” Luke said, curiously.

 

“Maz Kanata,” Rey replied, and Luke’s face split into a grin.

 

“Maz! It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from her.”  


“She had your lightsaber,” Rey reminded him.

 

“You said.” Luke’s grin eased, and his face turned pensive. “Rey. I don’t want you to think that I disapprove of your decision to take an active part in the Resistance; I don’t.”

 

Rey blinked at him, caught off guard.

 

“I understand,” Luke said, plainly choosing his words with care, “that the Resistance has become a family to you. The Rebellion was my family, too. But I had to step away from the Rebellion to become a Jedi and return to fight for them, and you need to bear in mind that you may have to make that choice, too.”

 

Rey bowed her head and thought about this as dispassionately as she could. Then she nodded.

 

She could feel the ligaments of her heart stretching and twisting at the thought of leaving the Resistance behind. She thought it would feel like abandoning Finn and Poe, Chewbacca, Black Squadron, General Organa, Kaydel, all the people she cared for and those she was beginning to know.

 

But if she had to, to protect them –

 

Rey wondered if she could really do it, and decided that she would have to. They would know she was coming back, anyway. She would trust them to know that. She'd make it clear, somehow.

 

“Rey. Master Skywalker, sir.” Finn was at the door into the cargo bay. “We’ve been given a landing site. We’re fifteen minutes out.”

 

 

Rey didn’t feel like herself when she stepped onto the landing pad and looked around for her first sight of Coruscant. Finn’s swift, all-encompassing hug, and his whispered _call for me if you need me_ rang in her ears. She tried to shake it off – Emi didn’t have a Finn – but part of her wanted to cling to it, too, a piece of Rey to hold onto tightly while she pretended to be Emi. Emi wore her dark hair in a high ponytail with four small braids weaving through it, each one with a rough metal bead like a mechanical nut at the end; she wore dusty grey trousers, and a worn but originally high-quality navy-blue leather jacket over a beige shirt that had seen better days, and she was openly carrying a spacer’s multitool, including a very small vibroknife attachment. Rey didn’t recognise any of the clothes she was wearing, or the crystal on a dull metal chain around her neck which looked like a kyber crystal but didn’t sing like one, and the transfers of black spacer’s tattoos Finn had painstakingly applied to her cheeks effectively hid her freckles and made her look like a different person. Everything was very clean, and had been ironed by Finn with a deliberately clumsy hand. _You’re trying to look your best_ , he’d coached her. _All scrubbed and tidy. But you don’t know how exactly._

 

 _That’s not difficult to act_ , Rey had retorted, and leaned up to kiss his forehead for luck.

 

Rey pulled her left arm against her ribcage briefly, and felt the familiar shape and weight of her lightsaber hilt.

 

“I know it’s overwhelming for a spacer girl, Emi,” Lando said, with his usual joviality. “But try to keep up.”  


Emi was shy, Rey thought. Shy and scared. She blushed and ducked her head and scuttled after Lando.

 

Yolandé’s message had been secretly delivered. A family which had managed to hide Rebel sympathies and a Force-sensitive daughter, however slight either transgression really was in practice, was not one that was ever going to be caught easily. So far as the First Order or their sympathisers knew, Finn had told Rey, Yolandé had gone to Coruscant for no more secretive reason than guest-lecturing for a semester at one of Coruscant’s more august universities. And Lando’s business interests, as Lando had explained with a commendably straight face, covered all manner of sins.

 

So it was necessary to engineer a meeting, which meant that Lando dragged Rey all over the tourist centres of Coruscant – which Rey struggled to show interest in, half-overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, half-stunned by the city itself, gleaming and bright and making Emi in her once-nice coat feel very small and shabby. _Rey_ felt very small and shabby. But after seeing the facade of the Imperial Palace, visiting the Old Senate Building, sailing to the top of the Spire in a lift and looking down on Mon Mothma Gardens, and having an extremely uncomfortable and more than slightly ironic holo taken in Jakku Square – Rey understood that it memorialised the defeat of the Empire, and had nothing at all to do with her, but she still felt very strange about it, as if someone would instantly pick her out as the scavenger from Niima Outpost – Rey was both curiously relaxed and very twitchy. Absolutely no-one of any species was looking at her, except to give her a once-over that said she wasn’t clean enough or classy enough for Coruscant’s upper levels.

 

There was plenty of visible security, sentient and droid, but nothing had caught Rey’s lightsaber yet. The streets were very clean, shop displays and houses immaculate and brightly coloured, and nobody looked sick or poor or sad. Stern and haughty, yes, and in the case of the many people Rey instantly identified as servants or guards professionally neutral, but the place was so tidy it made Rey’s skin crawl. There were plenty of tourists, and many of these were not as well-turned-out as the plainly wealthy locals. Rey felt she fit in well with them, and stuck close to Lando. He was at his jauntiest and smoothest, stopping to talk to business associates, explaining various bits of Coruscant to Rey as if he thought she was a bit slow – Rey had, in fact, previously heard of Mon Mothma, and she had seen a holo of the Imperial Palace. He looked like he fit in, perhaps not a Coruscanti but a respectable guest they’d do business with, striding along the upper-level streets with his sharp-shouldered blue cloak swirling behind him, imperiously hailing a speeder whose driver patronisingly corrected Rey and told her it was a hover.

 

Rey, who suspected that if she’d come to the upper levels of Coruscant alone she would swiftly have been moved on by security, flushed and looked out over the side of the speeder – fine, hover.

 

Lando laughed. “The Old Jedi Temple, please,” he said to the driver.

 

“That’s not a fun choice for a sunny day, squire.” The driver pulled away from the level and accelerated into the stream of traffic; for a moment, Rey imagined flying something with the hover’s manoeuvrability in the carefully organised torrent of Coruscanti traffic, and nearly smiled.

 

“Emi here is a believer,” Lando said comfortably. On cue, Rey fiddled with the false crystal around her neck; it made sense, she thought, Emi would never have been able to afford a real kyber crystal. “Can’t come to Coruscant without seeing the Temple.”  


“Oh, fair, fair.” The driver nodded sagely. “Terrible what the Emperor did to those kids.”

 

“He was evil,” Lando said. “The galaxy’s a cleaner place without him in it.”

 

He made it sound like a solemn platitude, but Rey carefully did not look at him. There had been more than the jovial right-thinking Mr Calrissian, entrepreneur, saying what Coruscant wanted to hear, behind those words. Even shielding herself as thoroughly as she was now, Rey knew it was there.

 

The journey to the Old Jedi Temple was a short one. Rey didn’t think they’d even needed the hover: it looked to her as if the shining carbuncle of the Imperial Palace was part of the same complex as the Old Jedi Temple, and the whole thing was extremely close to the old Senate building, which they’d visited immediately beforehand. Rey could see walking routes between all three as she stared out of the hover, which made her think that the old Jedi Order had been extremely close to the centres of power in old Republic days; it gave a meaning, an immediacy, to some of the history texts Luke had her reading, and made some of the things he'd said about political power and the Jedi make sense. They hadn't seemed like warnings at the time.

 

"Never seen Coruscant before, have you, miss?" the driver said, dropping through a hole in the traffic, circling a building, and shooting off into a different stream of traffic.

 

Rey shook her head dumbly.

 

"Well, this is a treat for you, then?" the driver said.

 

Rey nodded. She was grateful for her shields; she caught a shadow of something, then, from the driver, a shadow of speculation as to why a rich gentleman would be showing a spacer girl from the back end of nowhere around Coruscant, and well, she's a taking little thing even with those ugly tattoos -

 

Rey was grateful for the shields. They made it harder for her to pick up on impressions like that, and easier for her to keep her face blank in the face of things she shouldn't know.

 

They pulled up at the wide, high steps to the Jedi Temple, and Rey was fast out onto the creamy stone pavement. Lando followed her in a more leisurely fashion, tipping the driver handsomely, and Rey stood still, staring at the enormous building before her.

 

"It's _huge_ ," she said stupidly.

 

"There were a lot of Jedi, back in the day," Lando said casually. "And they were rich." He eyed it as if it didn't matter, someone who had seen a tourist attraction so many times it was meaningless. "Used to look like a bit more of a mess, until a few years ago; then it was restored. Pointless."

 

Rey looked at him.

 

Lando shrugged. "There aren't enough Jedi for this place." He snorted. "If there are any left. Sorry, Emi, I know you're a believer."

 

"It's fine," Rey said quietly, trying to talk like someone whose rich boss had just been a jerk about their religion. She looked back at the Jedi Temple, fingering Emi's necklace. It was very imposing and very beautiful, all cupolas and domes and towers, intimidating in its officialdom and in its power, and Rey could feel the strangeness of a place that had been intended for use and living, meant to stand for a hundred thousand years, turned into an empty home and a cenotaph shrine. She could feel a palimpsest of fading Force signatures centuries old, and she could feel the insidious creeping terror of the Temple Massacre, some fifty years previously.

 

Luke had warned her about this place, when they'd found out that Yolandé Naberrie wanted to meet in the Temple Sanctuary, the chapel area accessible by worshippers more than tourists. (He'd also been furious that Yolandé had chosen that meeting place, but there was little to be done about it.) He said that the building's wounds were fading in the Force, and that the worst areas, like the Jedi Council chamber where twelve younglings between the ages of seven and ten had been murdered, were blocked off. Emperor Palpatine had used parts of the building, but not – according to Luke – the formerly famous ones, the ones now accessible to tourists; those had been left to rot, or used as clonetrooper barracks and housing for their vehicles. Luke had added that most Force-sensitive individuals could still feel the peace of the sanctuary, the hundreds of years of stillness and calm and Light it had harboured, and had advised her to listen for the many peaceful, happy and wise lives that had been lived out in the Temple's walls, not the day of murders that had brought an abrupt, blaster-scarred end to the Jedi Order.

 

He had also advised her not to eat lunch, and reminded her of their discussions after the search and rescue mission, where Rey had felt rage rising within her at the wanton destruction of someone's home.

 

 _These are your first steps_ , Rey thought, for no reason at all.

 

Lando coughed.

 

"I'm sorry," Rey said, building up her shields and setting her foot onto the bottom step of the stairs. "I just can't believe I'm here."

 

 

The Sanctuary was a welcome relief. Nobody had died in here; Rey could feel it. After half an hour of wandering around pretending to sightsee, seeing splashes of blood and mangled robes that had been cleared away fifty years before, and hoping that her fixed expression was passing for wonder and timid awe, Rey desperately needed the peace and quiet of the enormous Sanctuary with its triple-height ceiling, natural light flooding in, and acoustics that swallowed every sound. She felt the Force lapping softly at her mind, like the waves in the quieter coves at Ahch-To, and closed her eyes and opened her mind to it for a few moments of blissful relief.

 

There were benches around the edge of the room, and Lando told Emi in a hushed voice that he would wait for her there, and she should take her time. They had talked this through carefully in advance; Rey nodded, and walked towards the centre of the room, where a ring of carpeting surrounded an irregular kyber crystal as tall as Rey burst from a low pedestal. It shone in Rey's eyes, but she wasn't sure if that was the murky Coruscanti sun striking it, or the crystal itself.

 

Yolandé Naberrie was easy to pick out, even side-on with her eyes shut, in direct contrast to the full-face picture Rey had been shown. Her nose was slightly shorter than General Organa's, her profile a little more like Luke's, her colouring darker, and she was ten years younger than the twins, but Rey could see a very obvious resemblance to General Organa in height and build, and the way she carried herself. And then, too, there was that ring of affinity that Luke had described between herself and Luke and General Organa, which felt far plainer to Rey here, between these three cousins, than it ever had done on Lah'mu. Which made sense; Dr Naberrie was General Organa and Luke's first cousin. Their mothers had been sisters.

 

The ring was not crowded. There were not many worshippers kneeling before the crystal. Rey settled down cross-legged a respectable distance from Dr Naberrie, straightened her back, lifted her head, closed her eyes and settled into the Force sense she'd opened her mind to when she entered the room.

 

Yolandé Naberrie glowed, soft but slight. She didn't have as much potential power as Jas or Finn, even if Jas might choose never to use the Force and Finn kept sidling away from the possibility of becoming a Jedi. Rey thought that probably explained why she was able to look on the Temple as a soothing place to come rather than a harrowing one; maybe she didn't keep seeing the flashes of blasters pitted against lightsabers. Still, she was there in the Force, and when Rey touched her mind, she didn't recoil.

 

 _Lando Calrissian is sitting by the eastern exit_ , Rey thought, spelling it out carefully. There was no-one else in the room who could hear her, she was reasonably sure - after walking through the Jedi Temple she wasn't sure why anyone Force-sensitive would ever want to come here in their entire lives - but just in case she kept it on the tightest possible bandwidth.

 

There was no acknowledgement. Rey waited, eyes closed, and after a few moments heard the rustle of Yolandé Naberrie's academic robes as the older woman stood, remained still for a few seconds, and then walked away, slow and unhurried, in the direction of the eastern exit.

 

Lando had told Rey to give him at least five minutes. Rey relaxed into her meditation, making sure her Force presence remained masked as Luke had taught her, just in case someone seriously Force-sensitive came in and wondered who the hell she was.

 

Her breathing eased into the rush of the tide, and Rey listened to the Force.

 

 

Ten minutes later she stood, folded her hands and remained stationary for a moment, before turning away and walking towards the eastern exit, lifting her internal shields slowly with each step so she wouldn't get a horrible shock when she stepped out into the rest of the Temple. Lando and Dr Naberrie were waiting outside as Lando had said they would, sitting on smooth wooden benches and admiring the internal gardens while talking with polite interest of the tibanna gas market.

 

"Mr Calrissian, sir," Rey said awkwardly, glancing between Lando and Dr Naberrie as if she didn't know what was happening.

 

"Ah, Emi," Lando said expansively, getting to his feet. "Yolandé, this is Emi, deckhand on the _Falcon_. Han hired her not long before his illness, and I've kept her on. Even Chewie can't fly the _Falcon_ any distance by himself, and Emi's a good girl."

 

"Emi," Dr Naberrie said slowly. She had eyes just like General Organa's in shape and colour, and skin the smooth, clear colour of brown glass medicine bottles. "Pleased to meet you."

 

Rey bobbed her head and fidgeted.

 

"Where are you from?"

 

"Hastil IX, ma'am," Rey said, as if a Core world commodities trader would know where that was, and then hastened to add: "it's, um, it's a space station, moored off... Hastil. In the Western Reaches."

 

"Western Reaches," Yolandé said, looking faintly appalled. "Han used to spend a lot of time out there, didn't he?"

 

Not to Rey's knowledge. She looked at Lando, who was managing to appear impassive in a friendly, knowing sort of way.

 

"Occasionally," Lando said, and gave one of his warm laughs that invited everyone to share the joke. "My old buddy got around the galaxy."

 

"Quite," Yolandé said, looking back at Rey. "And you worked for Han?"

 

Rey nodded.

 

"What say we all go and get some lunch?" Lando said, adding to Yolandé - "Emi here has never been any closer to the Core than Onderon, I thought it would be a waste if she came to Coruscant and didn't see any of the sights. But I'm all tied up in meetings tomorrow, so we've been doing a whistlestop tour today."

 

Yolandé nodded, still casting occasional searching glances at Rey, and suggested a café in the Mon Mothma Gardens.

 

Open, Rey thought. Public. She wasn't sure if that was how this kind of... information exchange, she supposed, worked. Finn would probably be able to tell her. But then, Lando seemed happy with it.

 

After that, Rey had essentially nothing to do. It was like her Force abilities had just been the passport, some kind of seal of weird respectability on the enterprise; like Yolandé Naberrie was comforting herself for the shadier aspects of her actions by telling herself she was handing the information to the Jedi Order, once the peacekeepers of an entire galaxy, not the Resistance, dangerously unsanctioned by any official body until very recently and led by a woman half the galaxy thought was nothing but a warmonger. Rey watched Yolandé and her plate, and ate lunch while Lando and Dr Naberrie - who had several doctorates, Rey understood, and was a senior figure in the Daxov Investment Conglomerate, whatever that was - talked around the movement of commodities and risk analysis in today's galactic markets. Rey understood absolutely none of it, and remained puzzled by its relevance to the Resistance. It would probably help, she thought, if she knew more about recent political history. The kind that got filed under 'politics', not 'history'. Finn probably knew the politics bits, and Poe probably understood the history bits; both of them had carried out intelligence work, though Poe stuck firmly to being a fighter pilot these days and Finn was a part-time analyst when General Organa needed to throw someone at a problem and couldn't think of anyone with a specific, relevant skillset. Rey committed some of the names and facts to memory, although it was impossible to know which ones were relevant. She could always ask them later.

 

At one point, Rey left the table to relieve herself, and when she returned, she heard Dr Naberrie hissing to Lando: "- I would never have thought he - Force preserve us, she's younger than their son would be. But she has eyes like Han's."

 

Rey paused, grateful for the fact that she was hidden behind an immense plant with very large, sweet-smelling chartreuse flowers.

 

"I don't know anything about that, Yolandé," Lando said, smooth and confidential. "It's possible, it's crossed my mind, from what Chewie says he did treat Emi like a daughter - but Chewie's never said anything about her actually being his daughter. And you knew Han, Yolandé. He had his moments, but he was a stand-up guy. If Emi were his kid, he would never have left her alone on Hastil IX, and he would have given her his name."

 

"What does _Leia_ think?" Dr Naberrie said.

 

Lando shook his head. "I don't know. She's never met Emi."

 

Dr Naberrie sat back and stared at her plate. "The girl just seems so _familiar_."

 

"Maybe." Lando shrugged. "But I'd keep it to yourself - you know it would upset Leia, if... It's not true, of course, but..."

 

"Oh. Obviously."

 

Rey decided that Emi was the kind of person who would forget something in the bathroom. She walked quietly back to the bathroom and stared at Emi's face in the mirror. The false tattoos spanning her cheekbones were waterproof, of course, so - since her face felt as if it was burning - Rey splashed her face with water. Her cheeks weren't red; she recognised the fixed expression she used to get when Unkar Plutt shortchanged her. But she felt as if it helped.

 

Rey said nothing for the rest of the meal, apart from some stumbling comments on the spirituality of the Temple when Yolandé asked her about it. Honestly, she could have talked about it for hours, but here, in a café in a public garden in the middle of Coruscant, she couldn't tell the truth.

 

She was very glad when Lando said they needed to get back to the _Falcon_ and discuss the shipping Yolandé had mentioned - if she was still considering moving her home base to Naboo after her time at the university? - with Chewbacca. She almost missed the handover of a datastick between Yolandé and Lando, slipping from Yolandé's wide, stiff sleeve to behind Lando's cloak, and she was too embarrassed to do much more than mumble a response when Yolandé took her hands and said "May the Force be with you, Emi." From the serious, searching look in Dr Naberrie's eyes, it was plain that whatever Lando had said, she still thought Emi was Han's daughter.

 

Rey was very quiet, all the way back to the _Falcon_. Luke was deep in meditation when they arrived, and Chewbacca was working on something, smoothing over one of the many lousy modifications Unkar Plutt had made so it actually worked as advertised. Finn was waiting for them, though, bright-eyed and a little impatient. Lando laughed, and flipped him the datastick. "Here's the supplementary data, champ. Yolandé Naberrie's got no tact to speak of, but when she does something, she goes all in. She's got some solid information and a really good money trail for who's funding the First Order, so we can hit 'em where it hurts."

 

Finn grinned, but he was watching Rey, and there was a faint crease between his eyebrows. "Rey? You okay?"

 

"Yes," she said, "I mean, no - well - the Temple was... bad, and Dr Naberrie thought I was Han's secret daughter."

 

"I thought that threw you off," Lando said kindly. "Hey, look. Han wouldn't have minded. It'll make sure Yolandé keeps her mouth shut; she thinks Leia's dangerously uncivilised, she won't want any word that she met Emi to get back to Leia."

 

"Is that why you encouraged her to believe it?"

 

Lando didn't flinch; of course not. "Yeah. Well spotted." He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. "You did a good job, Rey."

 

Rey smiled weakly. She went and changed out of Emi's clothes, and then went and ran through some lightsaber forms in the cargo bay until Luke came out of his meditative state and asked about the mission.

 

Rey told him about the Temple, and - briefly - about Yolandé Naberrie and the conclusions she had jumped to. Luke understood a little better than Lando did why she was troubled, but didn't seem bothered either. Rey didn't understand why she was so disturbed, so it probably wasn't anything she could expect anyone else to understand yet.

 

They talked through the Temple Massacre, and the history of the building complex in more recent times, and Luke helped Rey practise some of the methods for working through emotions in the Force he'd taught her, and then Luke left Rey alone while he cooked.

 

After dinner, Rey played several hands of sabacc with Chewbacca and Luke and lost every last one. Eventually, she went to bed, but found herself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, for hours. Finn tiptoed in when he'd finished the primary analysis he'd been talking about, and she sat up.

 

"I thought you were asleep," Finn said.

 

"I'm not."

 

Finn looked at her for a second, then sat down on his bunk to remove his shoes.

 

"I keep thinking about what Yolandé said."

 

"About Han? Why?"

 

"I don't think it was fair." Rey swung her legs over the edge of the bunk.

 

Finn craned his neck and peered up at her. "I don't think Yolandé's fair to anything that doesn't involve numbers."

 

"It reminds me of something Kylo Ren said."

 

" _Wow_."

 

"No, just - he told me, _he would have disappointed you_. Han, I mean. That's who he meant."

 

"Maybe he would have done. Han would have done, I mean." Finn pulled off his trousers and socks, and swapped his shirt out for a sleep one.

 

"Maybe, I guess. But..." Rey shook her head, frustrated. "Why doesn't this make sense? Why is it so difficult to talk about?"

 

"Because out here you can't just go over every nut and bolt and flux capacitator on Black One until she gleams, and Poe looks at you like somebody finally understands his aerodynamic baby?" Finn suggested, and tugged on her ankle. "Kind of hard to work out your feelings with engineering when Chewbacca supervises every change you make. Come down here."

 

Rey dropped to the floor, and sat down on Finn's bunk next to him. He wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned into him. He always felt as warm and strong and safe as he had on Starkiller Base, when Chewbacca had told her that coming back for her was his idea.

 

"I know Han wasn't perfect," Rey muttered eventually. "But he was better than anything I had, growing up. It's not true and Yolandé wasn't fair, because - because Han wouldn't have done that to General Organa." She was silent for a second. "But I... I wish it was true."

 

If it was, then she'd have something of her family. She'd have met her father. He would have liked her, and offered her a place, and fought for her. She'd own something he gave her and taught her to use. She'd fly his ship. He'd have been impressed by her.

 

It wasn't true.

 

Finn squeezed her shoulders gently, and pressed his lips to her temple. "I get it, Rey. I get it. Here." He loosened his grip, and then tugged her backwards to share the narrow bunk with him. "C'mon. Try to sleep."

 

Rey nodded, and rested her head on his chest, tangling her legs with Finn's. "Thanks, Finn."

 

"It's nothing." He ran his fingers through her hair. "Don't want you upset."

 

Rey smiled. "This was a good idea of Poe's. It helps."

 

Finn chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest. "He's a smart guy."

 

"I miss him, you know?"

 

"Yeah," Finn murmured. "Me too."

 

Rey stifled a yawn in Finn's shoulder, and then leaned up to kiss him lightly on the lips. He smiled sleepily. "Night, Finn."

 

"Night." He slid an arm around her waist. "Sleep well."

  


When Rey woke up, after troubled dreams, Finn had got up and gone; the blanket was tucked around her in that specific way that meant that Finn had made her stir as he climbed out of bed, and had soothed her back to sleep again. Rey scrubbed her eyes; her head felt thick, and she couldn't remember what her nightmare had been about. She remembered yellow eyes, and a feeling of great shock - but she couldn't remember anything else, and she had no idea if it had been nothing more than a dream, or if it had rung with the half-truth of a vision. Rey did not tend towards visions; Luke had occasionally speculated that that had to do with living so firmly in the present. Rey really wondered what other choice he thought she'd had, over the last fifteen years. Nobody had a future on Jakku.

 

Racking her brains, Rey got up, dressed and splashed her face with some of the meagre supply of water the Falcon doled out. She was still thinking hard when she made her way towards the galley to help herself to breakfast, and found Luke, very solemn, piloting the _Falcon_ when it wasn't his turn.

 

"Where's Lando?" Rey asked, halting in her path.

 

"Good morning to you too," Luke said dryly, but he was staring out into hyperspace with a tight little line between his eyes.

 

Rey looked at Chewbacca, who had carefully arranged the piloting rota to his liking, and would probably not be pleased if either Luke or Lando had meddled with it on short notice.

 

 _Calrissian's got his head together with Finn_ , Chewbacca yowled at her. _New intel. More Knights of Ren stuff._

 

"Oh," Rey said. Her stomach felt like it had just dropped from the stratosphere to ground level: interruptions with new intelligence were never good news. And if someone had felt it was urgent enough to make a risky data connection, even a connection to the _Falcon_ and its bleeding-edge communications array....

 

Rey picked up her breakfast and took it with her when she went to find Finn.

  
  


Both he and Lando were, as Chewbacca said, puzzling over some files on a datapad with extremely serious faces, and talking to each other in low tones, reaching for other files spread out around them, cross-referencing and making brief allusions to things Rey suspected were need-to-know. Rey waited for either of them to notice her, and then, when Finn only looked up and waved a stylus at her with a tight little smile, sat down and applied herself to her breakfast. When she finished that, and Finn and Lando's conference showed no signs of abating, she set her bowl aside, crossed her legs beneath herself, and settled in to meditate.   


 

She felt Finn join her, an indeterminate stretch of time later that could have been minutes or hours.

 

 _I thought you didn't like this_ , she said to him. Finn submitted to meditation as an important discipline, but sometimes found it difficult to spend significant amounts of time in the confines of his own head, and preferred to strictly regulate his sessions. This was uncharacteristic.

 

 _You're calming_ , he answered, which made her smile. No-one had ever told her _that_ before.

 

She brushed his mind with a question.

 

 _Later_ , he said. _I need to remember the Force is a neutral thing. Light and Dark depending on how you use it._

 

Rey seized the questions that sprung up in the wake of this and stuffed them into a corner of her mind far from her meditation space.

 

They opened their eyes at the same moment, and Rey turned her head to catch Finn's eye.

 

"Darkness passes," she said. "It always passes."

 

Finn's eyebrows did something complicated and redolent of scepticism. "Where did you hear that?"

 

"Someone wise told me once," Rey said, feeling a little silly. "Someone... who would know."

 

Finn tilted his head. "The desert woman?"

 

Rey picked at the sole of her boot and nodded. She still didn't often talk about the desert woman; didn't like sharing her, felt foolishly protective of her. But Finn and Poe had deserved to be told, and when Rey had explained, in short, stumbling phrases, neither had laughed.

 

"Well," Finn said, staring over at the bulkhead wall on the other side of the cabin. "Maybe."

 

"What did you find out?" Rey asked.

 

Finn didn't hesitate. She'd known he wouldn't, if she asked him directly. "It was the last report from one of our best spies inside the Order. One of our _only_ spies. She turned because of the Knights of Ren, and... they caught her last week." Finn paused. "There was a public execution. Today. She got off her last report three days ago."

 

"Is that what they'd do to you, if you were caught?" Rey drew her knees up to her chest, and locked her arms around her shins.

 

"If I was lucky," Finn said, and fell silent.

 

Rey kept silence with him for a moment, and then said very carefully: "What did she have to say?"

 

"The First Order is planning to use the Knights who can use the Force to break into minds on a regular basis," Finn said heavily. "To break key figures. Gunners, commanders, pilots in the field."

 

Rey caught her breath.

 

"We don't know if all of them can do it, or how well," Finn continued. "We're not even sure how many of them there are. But..."

 

"We need to stop them."

 

Finn's elbows were resting on his knees, his hands folded. He stared at his clasped thumbs for a moment, and then licked his lips and glanced at Rey. His eyes were full of urgency; he wore that look he got when he wanted to act _now_.

 

"I saw Poe after Kylo Ren got in his head," Finn said. "Right after. Less than an hour."

 

Rey didn't say anything, didn't breathe; could have sworn her heart didn't beat.

 

"Rey," Finn said, taking hold of one of her hands and squeezing tight. "We _need_ to stop them."


	6. Chapter 6

_When she is thirteen and customers have started to ask Unkar Plutt how much for her as well as the parts she salvages, Rey dreams of a crashed AT-AT for three nights in a row._

_I am not his slave, she tells herself, pacing around it. In her dream it is broad daylight, but the sun that beats down does not burn her. I don't know what those files say about me. But I'm not his slave. He can't sell me off to sweeten a deal._

_If you are not his slave, you can leave, the desert woman's voice says, firm and kind._

_I can't. How will my family find me?_

_You will not go far._

_There is a moment of silence. Rey squints up at the sun, tries to decide if it bears any relation to the landmarks she already knows._

_Be ready, my loved one, says the desert woman._

 

***

 

Rey's lightsaber matches with Luke - and occasionally with Finn, who had been able to light one up and had a vested interest in making sure that he could counter a Jedi's use of a lightsaber - were starting to draw crowds. Rey wondered if that was really right; she had a vague sense of the spirituality of the Force, of the deep currents and tides that moved around her, and she had trouble taking it lightly. Honestly, she wasn't sure how to approach it. She needed the practice against real people, not practice droids - every time she clashed with First Order forces she felt surer of that - but surely something about people betting on her matches wasn't right.

 

Luke mostly just looked amused when she brought it up, after a dawn lesson on tactics and lightsaber forms, when they were walking back to the main base. "I would have done it when I was your age," he informed Rey, collapsing into a chair at a shaded table where a lot of people too senior to be any of Rey's business were sitting and eating breakfast. "If I'd had anyone to spar with bar Darth Vader."

 

"People are placing bets," Rey said. Finn always pretended to be offended by the number of people who bet on her for preference; in reality, he had more experience with similar weapons than she did, and more experience with varied weapons in general, and he was Force-sensitive enough to make it a comparatively even fight. For now.

 

Admiral Antilles let out a sound somewhere between a cough, a laugh, and a sigh, accompanied by half a mouthful of caf making its way onto the table. " _Really_? Force preserve me. _Pilots_. What odds are they giving?"

 

Luke told him.

 

Rey's eyes narrowed. "Are you betting on my sparring matches?"

 

Luke folded his hands over his stomach. "It would be wrong for me to put bets on my own students."

 

"Yeah, right, and I'm a gundark," Admiral Antilles said, setting his caf cup down with an unnecessary clink.

 

"I don't know," Luke said, with studied innocence. "Are you a gundark?"

 

Admiral Antilles screwed up a flimsi and threw it at him. "Lando, are you running the betting pool?"

 

"You betcha," General Calrissian said, and tossed a wink at Rey, who grinned. "Would I miss an opportunity like that? And I promise it's not rigged, either."

 

"See previous comment about gundarks," Admiral Antilles grumbled. "Put me down for five credits on Rey."

 

Rey blushed. "So... it's okay, then?"

 

"Obi-Wan Kenobi will be spinning in his grave," Luke said comfortably. "Or he would be if he had one. Go ahead, Rey."

 

Rey sparred with Finn, and often she won, and sometimes she lost, because he was kriffing _fast_ when he wasn't dehydrated and hadn't just crashed a TIE fighter.

 

Poe made a point of cheering them both on. Rey liked that; it made her feel warm inside.

 

***

 

The Provisional Senate was not supposed to know Rey existed. At least, officially.

 

“There are people besides the First Order who would like a piece of the Jedi,” Luke explained matter-of-factly, packing his bags. “Not everyone in the Provisional Senate will be friendly; some will probably be resentful. Nobody likes to be proven wrong, and someone who’s been proven wrong and then saved from destruction by the person who was right… This isn’t going to be fun. And I don’t want people to focus on you as a figurehead; you’re nineteen, it isn’t fair.”

 

Rey perched on top of his wardrobe – she really enjoyed the movement skills that came with using the Force – and watched him carefully folding his smartest robes, packing away datapads and toiletries, like any man of his age planning a journey. Although probably very few men of his age planned secret visits to deniable palaces to reconstitute the governing body of the New Republic. “It happened to you,” Rey pointed out.

 

Luke gave her an extremely wry look. “That’s why I know it isn’t fair.”

 

Rey grinned, and raised a hand in defeat. She straightened and banged her head on the ceiling, which made Luke snort. She swore, and jumped lightly down from the wardrobe. “But there’s no way they don’t know I exist.”  


Luke looked thoughtful. “Gossip… distorts things. They may think they know a great deal, but I doubt that much of it is really accurate.” He smiled at her. “You and Finn are news, and you’ve got the Dameron boy watching over you. A Jedi, a defector hero, and a pilot who practically lives on the recruiting posters?”

 

“I know,” Rey said, unable to resist, “we’ve got one on the wall of our bunkroom. _And_ Kaydel picked up one of the ones of Finn for me.” She thought they were both very flattering images. Snap kept joking that they needed a poster of her, but Rey had pointed out that there was nothing much inspiring to put on it – you were either Force-sensitive or you weren’t, it wasn’t like flying an X-wing or making a moral choice in the face of overwhelming pressure – and in any case, encouraging Force-sensitive people to call themselves Jedi was asking for trouble in a galaxy roamed by the First Order.

 

Luke made a noise that might be loosely defined as a snigger. Apparently Jedi masters weren’t too good for that. “Exactly. There will be members of the Provisional Senate who have a grossly inaccurate idea of your existence, but I don’t want them cornering you to try to find out more, which is why I don’t want you anywhere near them. I especially don’t want any accurate rumours or guesses about your family leaking out; we have enough problems with this galaxy's ideas about Skywalkers, we don't need everyone hunting for a few more to add to the collection."

 

Rey sat down on a chest full of droid parts and tools; Luke liked to tinker, and General Organa had shoved a trolley of mechanical bits and pieces at him early on and told him he might as well make himself useful, her tone full of vinegar and badly-concealed affection. “Will you be all right?”

 

Luke smiled. It was a very peaceful smile, but not a very kind one. “I brought down the Death Star and witnessed the end of the Emperor, Rey. I will be fine. They will be frightened. Leia may find it a little easier to complete her to-do list.”  
  
Rey frowned. “Aren’t they frightened of her?” She was obscurely offended on the General’s behalf.

 

“Oh yes,” Luke said tranquilly. “Leia has a power they can't understand. And she won't use it, not the way they expect her to, which confuses them at least as much as it confuses the First Order - although the First Order consider it an asset, rather than a danger. But at least the senators know she’s human.”  


Rey fidgeted with the edge of her jacket. “You’re human, too,” she pointed out.

 

“Not as far as they’re concerned,” Luke said succinctly. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Rey.” He zipped his bag up. “There will be other occasions when you’ll get dragged into politics, and you’ll resent it as much as I do, and you’ll find it as frustrating as Leia does, and you’ll be very grateful for the existence of competent aides like the Connix girl and problem-solvers like Lando. But this time, you get to dodge the entire sorry mess and go sailing around the galaxy with your best friends. Don’t waste your time worrying about an old man like me.”

 

Rey snorted herself, and stood up. “It’s not going to be a game. We’re looking for inhabitable planets. We promised the General we’re going to find some good back-ups for her list, Poe and I are still working on the cartography and Finn has four documents full of specifications – one from the General, and one from Admiral Antilles, and one from Lando, and one from Admiral Ackbar –”

 

“Just no ice planets,” Luke said, hiding a smile for some reason Rey didn’t understand. “Promise me, Rey, no ice planets.”

 

Rey laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

 

“And why don’t you call Wedge by his name? Admiral Ackbar I understand, you don’t see much of him, but Wedge…”

 

“Because every time he looks at me he looks a bit horrified,” Rey said candidly.

 

“He’s just waiting to see what you do next.” Luke tried to pick up his bag, and Rey removed it from him before he could say anything. “Wedge thought he was done being surprised by desert kids with blue lightsabers.”

 

“Well,” Rey said, sneaking a careful sideways glance at Luke to see how he took this – Rey hadn’t discussed her family in specific terms around him since the DNA test, carefully avoiding any use of the last name she might be entitled to, and which Luke had offered her – “apparently Skywalkers specialise in kids like that.”

 

Luke’s smile was very bright and very surprised. “Keep up your meditation and your sparring,” he said. “I want to see those soresu forms perfected when you get back.”

 

 

Finn had quite a long list of planets, most of them in obscure and downright weird places, and all of them with extensive justifications that Finn would tell you all about if you gave him half a chance. Rey and Poe mapped out a route that took in all of them and listened with half an ear while Finn ranked them by desirability. Needless to say, it was not a ranking that coincided with their chosen route in the slightest.

 

General Organa and Luke left the day before they did, quietly and without fanfare; Lando had already gone, and taken Kaydel with him. They all had plausible reasons for being away from Lah’mu, and so far as Rey could tell, nobody had guessed that their absence had to do with the Provisional Senate. She floated her and Finn’s bags out to the _Falcon_ in the rain – partly for the practice with the Force, partly because Finn was still working on his physio and she didn’t want him heaving bags around and disrupting his recovery – and took her place next to Chewbacca in the co-pilot’s seat. Poe was leaning over the co-pilot’s seat, grinning like a man besotted, but he hadn’t tried to sit down in it, and when Rey patched through to the control room to ask for clearance he and Finn sat down in the jump seats at the back of the cockpit.

 

“I can’t believe I’m flying in the _Millennium Falcon_ ,” Poe said worshipfully.

 

Finn snorted.

 

“This ship is a legend, Finn!”

 

“Yeah, well, you should have seen it on Jakku!”

 

“Shut up, we’re flying,” Rey said happily, and Chewbacca observed that he could reach back and bang their heads together easily enough if properly incentivised.

 

Both Poe and Finn laughed.

 

 

The first planet was called Ellon-X-IV, and had a noticeably thin atmosphere. Finn made them turn back and crossed it firmly off the list when Chewbacca started to wheeze.

 

“Maybe most humans can handle it,” he said. “And Besalisks and Twi’leks, obviously. But nobody else is going to.”

 

Poe gave him a warm, almost soppy smile. Rey would have teased him about it if she weren’t doing exactly the same thing.

 

 

The second planet had such kudzu-like vegetation they barely got back on the _Falcon_.

 

“That’s a no,” Rey said, cutting bits of vine off herself with her lightsaber.

 

“Too green for you?” Poe said solemnly.

 

Rey threw a bit of dead charred vine at him, and Chewbacca yelled at them that if one someone didn’t start firing on that overgrown banyan, they were all going to be eaten alive by trees.

 

Finn obliged.

 

 

The fourth planet was actually reasonable. Finn insisted on circumnavigating it in low orbit while making detailed notes.

 

 

“I think we might be onto something,” Finn said cheerfully, after the fifth through seventh planets were also acceptable (if one discounted the quicksand on the fifth planet that had nearly consumed BB-8). The sixth even had some lovely beaches; Rey practised swimming, and found the current much friendlier than Ahch-To’s.

 

 

The _Falcon_ was struck by lightning while Chewbacca and Rey were trying to land it on the eighth planet.

 

“You jinxed us!” Poe yelled happily from the jump-seat at Finn, who was beginning to look a little ill. BB-8 could be heard bleeping profanely from the central compartment as the ship shook.

 

“ _Shut the fuck up_!” Chewbacca roared.

 

Chewbacca and Rey crash-landed the _Falcon_ , but fortunately no serious harm was done. They were able to mend it between the four of them, wearing gas masks against the noxious winds the storm had brought, gasping in the pounding rain, though it took two days and ended with Finn sneezing his way pathetically into a nasty head cold. Chewbacca and Rey eased the _Falcon_ back into hyperspace, and then Chewbacca told her to go and tie Finn to his bunk before the kid infected everyone else.

 

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Rey said, and went back to the bunkroom to find Poe sitting on Finn's legs and arguing with him about proper recuperation from a cold, dark eyes sparkling with laughter.

 

"Rey, tell him I can get up," Finn complained, sitting up in bed. The blanket Poe had pulled up to his chin slid down his bare chest. Rey noted with approval that Finn's sodden clothes had already been hung up to dry; Poe had also changed.

 

"No," she said, stripping off her own wet clothes and swapping them for dry ones. "You're sick, Finn."

 

"Ugh." Finn flopped back into bed, flinging an arm over his eyes like he was suffering. His voice sounded thick with cold. "Come _on_. Oh!"

 

Rey, who had climbed up into his bunk, tucked herself against him and tangled her legs with Poe's; Poe's cheeks had gone slightly pink. "We have sixteen hours in hyperspace," Rey said. "Ages. BB, can we have _Hero of Tatooine_ , please?"

 

BB-8 bleeped an affirmative, and added that Designation-Finn would stay put if he knew what was good for him, because he was clearly malfunctioning.

 

Finn called BB-8 a banthafucking shitheel, but his heart plainly wasn't in it; he turned onto his side, laid his legs over Poe's lap, and settled in to watch the holodrama.

 

" _Hero of Tatooine_?" Poe said in disbelief, watching a tanned and chiselled face take shape on the projection. "Does Master Luke know you watch that?"

 

"He recommended it," Rey said. "Told me it was the most historically accurate one."

 

After _Hero of Tatooine_ was over, and while the sequel ( _Love In A Time Of Rebellion_ ) was loading, Rey went to get hot drinks while Poe collected more blankets and cushions to improve the nest Finn's bunk had become. She sneezed while heating up the chocolate, and Chewbacca made an inaudible but long-suffering remark from the games table, where he was beating his own high score at dejarik.

 

"What?" Rey said.

 

 _I said, I should have bloody known you'd give it to each other_ , Chewbacca yowled. _Just don't swap more than saliva without getting tested!_

 

"I, um," Rey said, and went back to the bunk blushing like the sunrise.

 

 

The ninth planet was all right. Finn sneezed his way through his assessment as one martyring himself for The Cause.

 

 

Finn stepped onto the tenth planet and immediately announced that he had a bad feeling about this. Poe laughed and put an affectionate arm around his shoulders: "If you say so, buddy, but it looks pretty good to me at first glance."

 

Rey, still inside the cargo bay, smiled and trotted down the gangplank to join them - and then, as her boots touched earth, gasped and recoiled halfway back into the ship, struck by a darkness more profound and crueller even than that which had swirled around Kylo Ren.

 

"Rey?" Finn said, puzzled, starting back towards her.

 

 _Little Skywalker_ , the darkness hissed, delighted to see her, reaching for her like she was an old friend long lost. _Heiress and champion, with fire in your bones - we have awaited you -_

 

"No," Rey snarled, clinging to her lightsaber so hard the grip bit into her hands. "No, no - I am none of you -"

 

The darkness laughed, and Rey trembled in a way she never had done before, faced with Ren or dizzying drops or Unkar Plutt or fellow scavengers with their knives out - known threats, flesh and blood and tangibility. Poe caught her when she swayed; Finn raised his blaster rifle, and he knew there was something there too, he was pointing his rifle in the right direction, but he was frowning, confused, only doing it because Rey was reacting so badly. And you couldn't shoot this threat.

 

"What is it, Rey?" Poe was taking most of her weight now, his arms warm and strong, and when Rey scrabbled backwards they both moved with her, withdrawing into the _Falcon_.

 

"We need to get out of here," she cried, feeling the darkness as almost a physical fog, creeping up the gangplank to get them. "We need to - Chewbacca, shut the cargo door - _please_ -"

 

Chewbacca bawled something profane about the whims of teenaged Jedi, but the cargo door closed promptly nonetheless. Rey felt her bones turn to jelly, and she collapsed to the floor with relief, Poe slowing her fall until she was sitting on the floor propped up against his chest, shaking, Finn kneeling beside them both. But the darkness was still flowing all around them, reaching out to her with clammy, insubstantial fingers.

 

 _Skywalker_ , it cooed to her. _Little Skywalker. Do not be afraid._

 

Fear leads to anger, Rey thought, and then remembered what the desert woman had told her, years before she ever knew she had the Force, years before the name Skywalker had meant anything but an outlandish story told by drunken scavengers: be honest with yourself. But be willing to think about why you feel.

 

 _I am afraid of you_ , she said silently. _But you do not own me. I deny you._

 

 _It is your destiny_ , the darkness coaxed. _It is your destiny. Little Skywalker._

 

Rey stared into Finn's eyes, full of worry and love, Finn's stormtrooper eyes, Finn who lowered his rifle and told the entire First Order _you can't make me_ ; she curled her fingers into Poe's arm, Poe who the First Order tried to break, who climbed back into a cockpit to fight again. And Rey thought of what Luke had taught her, sitting on a cliff high above the Lah’mu base and talking idly of farmboys and Death Stars.

 

 _There is no such thing as destiny_ , Rey told the darkness. _Life is what we make it._

 

She took her first deep breath of a meditative cycle; pictured her AT-AT, closed herself in and locked the hatches, and summoned up a sandstorm, scouring and ferocious.

 

Chewbacca appeared, shouldering his loaded bowcaster. "Is that shit-sucking Snoke bastard here for _another_ of my cubs?" he rumbled, low and dangerous like a shifting volcano. "Let me see him. I will paint the sky with his arterial blood and make a trophy of his miserable skull, and he will know _centuries_ of pain before I am finished with him."

 

"Uh, Chewbacca, sir," Poe said. "I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing to shoot. Or Finn would have done it by now."

 

"We need to leave," Rey said, her eyes focussed on the sandstorm inside her mind, blasting the darkness into the cleansing white heat of the desert. "This planet is - it _breathes_ Sith. Poe, can you help Chewbacca get us out of here?"

 

Poe nodded sharply, and Rey felt herself slide forward into Finn's lap as Poe let go of her. Finn wrapped his arms around her back, and after a few moments Rey heard the sound of Poe's boots and Chewbacca's feet heading purposefully back towards the cockpit. Ten minutes later they'd broken atmo, and not long after that Rey felt the characteristic jolt and rush of the _Falcon_ hitting hyperspace.

 

Finn tried to pick her up.

 

"Don't you dare," Rey said, into the warm skin of his neck. "Your back."

 

Finn groaned, but settled for Poe helping to lift Rey to her extremely wobbly feet when he returned, and helping her stagger to her bunk, where she managed to flop, eyes still seeing nothing but that sandstorm that wasn't real.

 

Finn sat down by her head and took her hand. Poe, the idiot, tried to leave, but quickly returned, saying ruefully: "Chewbacca sent me back with a Yavinese wasp in my ear. Apparently I'm more useful here."

 

Finn snorted, his thumb rubbing soft, grounding circles into Rey's palm. "Yeah.” After a pause, he sighed. “I don't think we'll be going back there. And Luke will be furious with himself when he realises he let Rey face that by herself."

 

"He couldn't have known," Poe protested, sitting down by Rey's feet.

 

"He won't care."

 

After a momentary silence, Poe picked up a datapad and cleared his throat. "Mamá used to read to me when I had... bad dreams."

 

"Really?" Finn said, interested. "Did it help?"

 

"'S supposed to," Rey managed to say. The desert woman had told her similar things.

 

One of Poe's hands landed on her ankle, and he hushed her. "Just get that stuff out of your head," he said, and started to read aloud from the X-wing manual he had used to teach her to read.

 

They stayed with her until the sandstorm died, and Rey fell into a true, dreamless sleep, feeling safe and loved.


	7. Chapter 7

The eleventh planet was the last planet. Rey insisted on going first, in case of Sith, but no: it felt perfectly normal, no echoes in the Force, no creeping darkness. It wasn't as brightly sunny as their last stop had been, but Rey found that reassuring, considering. Their flypast suggested it was worth a close look, and it wasn't difficult to find a decent spot to land.

 

"What's this one called again?" Rey asked, walking back to grab her backpack and swing it onto her back, turning her lightsaber off and tucking it into her belt.

 

"Tashel Quartus," Finn said. "No creepy crawly Force weirdness?"

 

Rey rolled her eyes at him; Finn had been cross with himself for not recognising the danger he had also sensed, but much less strongly, at their last stop. "No, Finn."

 

Poe snorted, and slung an arm around Rey's shoulders; she leaned into it instinctively, as she would have done with Finn. "Let's go, then. Is Chewbacca really not coming?"

 

"I think he thinks the _Falcon_ 's going to get stolen again if he leaves it alone for fifteen minutes."

 

"This planet isn't inhabited by sentient life," Finn said, apparently driven to defend the honour of his research. "That's the _point_."

 

Rey shrugged. "I think he wants a break, too. He never used to travel with anyone but Han. And I guess... we're a lot of people he doesn't know so well, and now hasn't been able to avoid for weeks."

 

A reflective silence fell as they walked through the low scrub vegetation. The earth was greyish, all the plants very low to the ground - a few small trees here and there were about Finn's height, and towered over all the other vegetation - but there were plenty of small flowers and a wide variety of shrubs. After a few minutes Rey spotted a couple of small, shy deer with more than the usual number of legs, which startled and cantered rapidly away when the trio came close to them.

 

Finn had retrieved a complicated instrument Rey did not understand, and had been forbidden from taking apart in order to understand it, and was taking measurements. Every couple of minutes he called out a reading, and Poe obligingly scribbled them down. Rey kept an eye out for anything hostile, and led them along the ridge of one of the low, rolling hills, along a thin track she thought the deer had probably made.

 

They stopped after about an hour, by a small, crystal-clear lake - but not too close, in case of further wildlife. This planet orbited a single sun, which was high in the sky; Rey put her back against a large boulder, Poe and Finn's shoulders bumping companionably against hers on either side, and turned her face up into the sunshine. They had mostly been lucky with the weather on the few planets they'd actually set foot on for any length of time, which made a change from Lah'mu's near-endless louring skies and rain, and her freckles were springing to life across her cheekbones and nose again.

 

After their lunch, they got up and carried on, and - shortly thereafter - had to dive out of the way of a herd of medium-sized grey quadrupeds with double tusks, running for dear life.

 

"That was close," Finn said, sliding down from the boulder he'd leapt onto.

 

Rey peeled herself out of the divot in the rock she'd shoved Poe and herself into.

 

"I wonder what spooked them?" she said suspiciously, and sneezed as the dust from the stampede got up her nose.

 

"Aw, man," Poe sighed. "Rey, you _had_ to say that -"

 

Finn yelled and scrambled back up onto the high ground, his blaster rifle practically jumping into his arms, and fired furiously at the sleek, leaping creatures that appeared in the cloud of grey dust thrown up by the fleeing herd. The blue bar of Rey's lightsaber snapped into life, and Poe drew his blaster, but it was little more than a handgun and proved ineffective. Rey stuffed him back into the divot and slashed at the snarling, long-snouted face that snapped at her and tore the air, lightsaber whirling in the defensive soresu forms Master Luke had spent so much time teaching her. The dust was thick and choking, and Rey had to squint to see; she couldn't get a grasp of what she was fighting, or how many of them there were, and Finn was only visible as an ever-familiar beacon in the Force and the red flash of his rifle, picking out marks in the dust Rey could not see.

 

It felt both like forever, and no time at all, until the dust settled and they found themselves surrounded by the creatures' rent bodies. Rey's heart was pounding, her chest heaving, and as she turned off her lightsaber and slid it into her belt with shaking hands she found herself laughing, less from joy than from shock. She'd never fought a pitched battle against multiple opponents before - and she'd always known that Finn and Poe would stand by her in a fight, but she'd never had to test it.

 

"Rey?" Poe said, one hand light and careful on her shoulder. "You ever going to let me out of here?"

 

Rey felt affection for him wash through her, warm and bright, and she turned and pressed him back into the rock for the third time and kissed him.

 

Poe's lips opened under hers, like he was surprised, but his hands curled around her waist and Rey laughed into his mouth, feeling alight and sparkling and kind of shaky, and wondering why the hell she and Finn hadn't done this with Poe before. It hadn't seemed like it would be welcome, and they were still working themselves out so there was no rush, exactly, but - this, this was like cool fresh water running over the rocks and the swell of the sea lifting a boat, and -

 

Finn slid down from the top of the rock and crashed into her back, and Rey wrapped her hand around Poe's wrist and leaned back to catch Finn's mouth with hers, and it felt like the Force was singing between the three of them.

 

"Wait," Poe said, and the music of it came to a halt. "Wait. I - I'm confused."

 

Rey and Finn both stopped. When they looked back at Poe, he was half-collapsed against the rock, boss-eyed and clearly freshly kissed, but also clearly _very_ confused.

 

"What?" Rey said, puzzled.

 

"Just - what's happening?" He gestured at the two of them with his free hand. "Where do I fit in here?"

 

"You're part of us," Rey said slowly.

 

"I thought," Poe said, stumbling over the words, "you two - or at least, you were getting there -"

 

"Yeah, but," Finn said very gently, touching his fingertips to Poe's cheek - and Rey saw how Poe leaned helplessly into the contact - "we weren't going to leave you out."

 

"See," Poe said, and he sounded like it hurt to say it. "I didn't realise I was part of it. I didn't... I just didn't. I thought you guys were just... tactile."

 

Rey let go of his wrist very carefully. Poe flinched at that, but he didn't look like he wanted her hand back.

 

"You mean," Finn said, better at words for this sort of thing, "you don't have feelings for us?"

 

Poe tried to smile, but it was a pale imitation of his usual hundred-watt grin. "I wouldn't go that far," he deflected, and in the Force Rey heard him unable to stifle the almost-vocalised _Force, if either of you knew_ \- but it was part of her unspoken bargain with him that she would never use that either for or against him, and she kept quiet. "But... well."

 

"But what?" Finn said, looking so sad and disappointed Rey's heart broke a little for him.

 

Rey took a deep breath. Think about why you feel, she thought, and then acted on a far older lesson, looking around for a threat. She couldn't hear or see anything, but those creatures had been indiscriminate, swapping instantly from their native prey to Finn, Rey and Poe, and their blood was everywhere. Another pack might come for the remains.

 

"Tell us while we walk," she said. "We need to get back to Chewbacca."

 

 

It was not a happy party that returned to the _Millennium Falcon_. After an awkward hour, everyone had fallen silent. Rey was almost grateful for it.

 

 

They separated to different corners of the _Falcon_ ; Rey felt they all needed the space. She and Finn practiced the soresu forms Luke had told her to work on for a bit, but Rey couldn’t keep her mind on it, and even consciously level-headed, sweet-natured Finn seemed badly on edge; he almost threw his training lightsaber down with frustration and took his datapads and analysis work into one of the illegal cargo bays with a ration bar to snack on and couple of sleep-sheets for cushioning. They were all wound too tightly.

 

Poe had closed the curtain around his bunk and was listening to a tasteless audio holodrama about Rogue One. Rey could hear it when she walked past the bunkroom to the cockpit. BB-8 would be playing it for him; she could see the little droid’s lights through the curtain’s thin material.

 

Neither Poe nor Finn would need to stir from their respective hide-outs for hours, she thought, and dropped disconsolately into the co-pilot’s chair.

 

Chewbacca roared at her that he hadn’t had to deal with this much adolescent drama since Hoth.

 

“What?” Rey groaned. Her Wookiee was patchy in places, and apparently discussing relationships was one of them.

 

 _Leia and Han argued all the banthafucking time,_ Chewbacca explained. _Fucking loudly. Either shouting or kissing. No middle ground. Luke’s right, ice planets are a terrible idea. Everyone gets on each other’s nerves, everyone’s cold – or at least all you poor sods with no proper fur to speak of are - and everyone acts like a fucking bastard because of it._

 

“We didn’t shout,” Rey said miserably, storing up this information for later consideration. She couldn’t imagine General Organa young and shouting; General Organa hardly ever needed to raise her voice to make herself heard, and when she did, she tended to project it across a room rather than actually yelling. “And we weren’t arguing. It’s just – Finn and I, we were wrong, we made a mistake.”

 

 _You’re so young_ , she heard Poe saying as they paced back to the Falcon, his face in miserable creases, his voice straining to be reasonable. She couldn’t forget how wretched he’d sounded, or how determined. _You’re so young_ , and _you deserve better than this_ , and _I didn’t realise, I’m sorry, this is my fault._

 

Chewbacca made a noise Rey knew didn’t actually mean anything; it was just sympathetic.

  
Rey smiled weakly. “Thanks, Chewbacca.”  


Chewbacca expressed the opinion that it would all blow over and Dameron would come to his senses, and if she wanted to help him along the way she should try defeating his enemies in combat, which had worked for Chewbacca when he was courting.

 

Rey choked on a giggle, and wiped her eyes. “Thanks, Chewbacca, I’m… I’m working on it.”

 

Chewbacca decided that it was vitally important to her education as a pilot – forget all this Jedi banthashit, Han would never have stood for even a pretend deckhand not improving her abilities in the cockpit – that she learn a bit more about evasive manoeuvring, and by the time Rey wandered into the galley to get food for herself and Chewbacca she was almost able to confront Poe normally.

 

Poe, whose normally immaculate hair was standing on end, jumped a mile when he saw her. It was possible that watching soppy holodramas for several hours didn’t have the same soothing effect as handling a light Corellian freighter like you were being chased by the Hutts did.

 

“Sorry,” Rey said. “Just looking for something to eat.”

 

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Sorry.”

 

Rey shook her head silently, and rifled through the cupboards. Inspiration struck. “Poe,” she said, “what’s wrong with Hoth?”

 

Poe blinked repeatedly. “Nothing. I mean, it’s freezing cold and you’d hate that, and the Rebellion had a massive military setback there, but – otherwise, nothing. Why?”

 

“Chewbacca said ice planets were a bad idea because of Hoth. He was talking about Han and General Organa. And Luke asked me to avoid ice planets, too.”  


Poe ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more. “Oh. Well, my dad always used to say that the General decided to try flirting by yelling and making judgemental comments about Han Solo’s ethics on Hoth, and they used to have massive arguments in the middle of corridors at least once a week… apparently.” Poe’s eyebrows did something complicated. “Not sure what its being an ice planet had to do with that. But maybe tell Finn, he can put it on that list of his.”

 

Rey nodded. She swallowed, and licked her lips, and tried to be brave. “Poe…”

 

She could hear him brace himself. “Yeah?”

 

“Can we try again? From the beginning, I mean. With everybody, you know, knowing what everyone wants. Really.”

 

Rey’s face was burning.

 

Poe sighed and sat down, and it was Rey’s turn to brace herself. “Rey, I do… I like you, and I like Finn, a lot. Probably more than I should. I – you should have the chance to spend time with each other, and with other people closer to your own age, and decide if that’s what you want.”

 

“What does that mean – people of our own age?” Rey pulled down a packet of savoury biscuits, and stuffed a tub of thick cheese and vegetable sauce into the warmer. “Because I’ve met people my own age chronologically – and they seem like babies to me, Poe. Finn thinks the same way.” They’d never starved, or scavenged, or fought a Sith, let alone given up everything they knew because of a moment’s moral epiphany. Even the most scarred of the recruits of a similar age to Rey and Finn felt childish to them; the Rebellion’s victory had bought safe childhoods for at least a few young people in the galaxy. And after people had been with the Resistance for a while, they were either in awe of Rey and Finn, or distrusted Finn – in which case Rey distrusted them.

 

“It means that I’m trying to be a good person,” Poe said dryly.

 

Rey snorted, to show him what she thought of that. “But you don’t hate us. You’re not angry.”

 

“No! Force. No.” Poe sighed. “Never. I swear.”

 

“You should probably tell Finn that,” Rey said to the slowly revolving tub of sauce.

 

“He can’t think –” Poe sounded honestly horrified.

 

“I’m pretty sure he does.”

 

“ _No_ ,” Poe said, not a denial of what Rey had said, but a denial that Finn should ever believe Poe didn’t like him. “Where is he?”

 

Rey told him.

 

The speed with which Poe got up and went to find Finn in the fourth smuggling compartment by the defunct fire extinguisher was very gratifying. It made Rey think they might have some hope, after all.

 

She rolled her eyes. ‘People your own age’. Rubbish.

 

***

 

_The night after Rey has found herself bleeding, sleep takes a long time to come. Her stomach is griping, and the flow of blood does not stop, no matter what she does. She does not know if the amount she is losing is fatal, but surely blood loss that does not stop cannot be other than fatal._

_She wonders how she did this to herself. Something she ate? Something she did? She is not injured._

_Rey tries to stay awake. Falling asleep may mean she dies silently, seeping blood into the night. And she fears predators that may come to the smell of gore, though her little home is sealed. But she cannot help falling asleep in the end, and when she does, the desert woman is waiting, her arms outstretched._

_My loved one, she says. Do not be afraid._

_I'm dying, my blood, Rey says. She fell asleep crying, as she has not since she was a little girl, and here, still, tears fall down her face._

_Oh, no, the desert woman says, gathering Rey in her arms, sitting down on the soft grass of a place Rey does not know, somewhere green and lush with high rocky cliffs. My loved one, no. I am sorry. I told you before, but you were very young. And I did not realise this would come to you so soon. Fourteen is quite young, for a desert's daughter._

_What, Rey says, giggling through her tears now, with the hysteria of relief. You? Flawed?_

_The desert woman laughs into her hair and holds her tight. Oh, my loved one. Everyone is_ _._


	8. Chapter 8

Luke gave her a week's notice for their trip to Tatooine. It was more than she'd learned to expect, not because he enjoyed being unpredictable, but simply because their movements depended to some extent on the tides of the war - from half-sentences Rey caught, here and there, and thought she was privileged to be allowed to catch, the guilt of leaving his sister behind for so long weighed heavily on him, and he had voluntarily given up a surprisingly large amount of the independence he might have claimed. If the General needed him, whether it was for an openly discussed mission or for some secret objective Rey was only allowed to glimpse, Luke confined Rey's training to Lah'mu.  


Rey suspected that the General would eventually grow to feel stifled or babied by this and there would be arguments, but it had been more than a year since she'd dragged Luke home from Ahch-To and the General didn't seem to have cracked yet.

 

Rey looked across the table in Luke's quarters at Luke, and ate a mouthful of noodles before approaching the subject. "Why are we going to Tatooine?" she said eventually.

 

Luke looked cryptic and mysterious, which he knew annoyed her. "I'll explain when we get there."

 

"Right," Rey said, slurping her noodles thoughtfully. "Okay." She paused. "Am I allowed to tell anyone?"

Luke often tried to keep their movements quiet, something Rey thought was a bit pointless given that the base - while growing - was still small enough that everyone knew who she was. And they'd have to file a flight plan eventually.

 

"You should tell Finn and Poe," Luke said, picking at his own food. "I don't want them panicking when you disappear."

 

It was half a joke, and Rey smiled, but the smile slid off her face too quickly.

 

Luke paused and looked at her, not sharply but shrewdly. "Rey? Is something wrong?"

 

"Um," Rey said, re-examined her instinctive 'no', reminded herself to acknowledge and address her feelings instead of letting them fester, and - after a long and jumbled-up pause - blurted: "Yes. No. Sort of. I'm working on it."

 

Luke blinked several times and put his fork down. "And by that you mean..." His forehead crinkled. "Have the three of you argued? I've noticed things are a little more strained than usual between you, Finn and Dameron. You're normally inseparable." He cleared his throat. "If your relationship with Finn is changing, the two of you could get a separate room assignment, you know."

 

"No!" Rey said, too quickly, and squirmed under a sharp look from Luke. "No, I mean, we're fine. Or we will be. Fine, I mean."

 

Luke picked up his fork again. "Not the most convincing sentences I've hear you utter, padawan."

 

Rey said nothing.

 

Luke sighed, and his fork clattered in his empty bowl. "Tell me before you think it's getting out of hand, all right?"

 

"I will," Rey promised.

 

 

She told both Finn and Poe at the same time; outwardly, their reactions were exactly the same. Sad to see her go, excited for whatever she might discover. But she couldn't help picking up a wave of relief from Poe. _I need a break_ , he was thinking, so loudly she couldn't not hear - one day she was going to teach him to shield himself better; he was so open, and she liked that about him, but it worried her - _this is so hard_.

 

Rey clamped down on her own instinctive reaction, and Finn gave her a questioning look.

 

Rey avoided his eye. "I don't know how long I'll be gone," she said, instead of explaining.

 

"Don't forget to write," Poe joked. She wrinkled her nose at him; she practised, but her writing was still not fluent, and her spelling was awful.

 

He clapped her on the shoulder, friendly and easy and probably the first time he'd touched her since Tashel Quartus, and hurried off to a training session he was supposed to be leading. They'd had an influx of new pilots - none of whom, according to Iolo, could tell the difference between their arse and their elbow without two tries. Rey failed to see how this was relevant to being flight-capable.

 

When the door closed behind him, she looked at Finn.

 

"I know," Finn said, raising his hands. "This sucks."

 

Rey smiled half-sadly to hear him echo Poe's thoughts so clearly, and went to him when he opened his arms to her.

  
  


Poe was in the room when Rey was packing to leave, checking over the final collection of her possessions, and that in itself was a strange thing. Since the kiss Rey was still cursing herself for, Poe spent as much time out of their room as possible, and always kept to his bunk when one of them was there with him. He always ate in the mess, generally with a large, laughing group of pilots, though he himself didn't seem so cheerful; Rey and Finn were welcome to join, but they were never able to get Poe's attention for long, or to sit together in a smaller group. He sometimes closed his curtains at night, as well. Both Rey and Finn could tell when he was having nightmares, but even Finn's most careful enquiries elicited nothing but an 'I'm fine, buddy, just bad dreams' and a weary, false smile. He never ignored them, but he was very clearly trying to encourage them to develop other friendships, to see the potential for other relationships in the world around them.  


 

Rey knew he was trying to give them space. She understood his reasoning. She just wished he would get over himself some time before the sun exploded and obliterated Lah'mu's entire system.

 

She was so surprised when he stayed in the room, reading on his top bunk while she clumsily tried to fold her clothes for transport the way Finn had taught her to, that she very nearly said something. He seemed relaxed: she felt relaxed in his presence. It was almost like the unimaginably different way the three of them had moved around each other, less than six weeks ago.

 

"Tatooine, huh?" he said eventually, and Rey dropped her blaster belt out of sheer shock. She seized it, and buckled it on, trying to hide her surprise.

 

"Yes," she said, as casually as she could. "I don't know how long for."

 

"Keep in touch," Poe said, and he was smiling down at her, and there was warmth in that sad little half smile, there _was_ \- he _did_ care - why did he have to be so stupidly noble, or some other irrelevant banthashit notion, about this -

 

Rey carefully set those feelings aside for later consideration, and smiled back at him. "I will. Take care of Finn."

 

"He knows how to take care of himself," Poe joked.

 

"Yeah, but he still gets into all kinds of ridiculous trouble." Rey zipped up her bag. "This is the idiot who picked a one on one fight with Kylo Ren."

 

"Coming from you, Rey -"

 

"Hey." She grinned. "I didn't say I was any better."

 

Poe raised his hands in surrender. "I will," he said. Rey thought it came out a little softer than he meant it to. "Take care of him, I mean. And you take care of yourself, okay?"

 

"Of course." Rey swung her bag onto her back, and started checking her wallet of travel and identity documents again. Having such a thing was a new concept; Rey's existence had never been documented before, excepting whatever mysterious set of papers Unkar Plutt controlled. She went over it very carefully every time she looked at it.

 

She had closed the wallet, after assuring herself that the cards and chips were all in their place and said exactly what they had before, and was about to leave when Poe sat up again and spoke. His words were uncharacteristically awkward and stilted.

 

"You know - there are plenty of other pilots who could have done what I did. It could have been anyone, on Jakku."

 

Rey put her travel wallet away in one deep pocket, which she buttoned closed. "Really," she said at last, and glanced up at Poe through her lashes.

 

He rolled his lips together and nodded slowly. He wasn't looking at her, and there was a helpless flush burning high on his cheeks.

 

"I'm glad it was me," he said. "I'm just - Whatever - I'm glad it was me, Rey."

 

 _Oh_ , Rey thought to herself very softly. Something about his voice made a piece of her heart ache at the same time as her chest grew warm and light.

 

"Me too," she said, as kindly as she knew how to. "Me too."

 

Poe plastered a less truthful expression across his face, replacing it with his characteristic, default open friendliness. "Anyway. Safe travels, Rey."

 

"Thanks," she said, and shut the door very lightly behind her when she went.

 

Chewbacca complained that she was grinning like a Nubian loon, all the way to hyperspace.

 

***

 

"Mos Espa," Luke said, strolling down the ship's gangplank. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

 

Rey looked at the clean and neat, if slightly basic, spaceport, and looked back at Luke. She was sure her entire face was a question. She was familiar with various sorts of hives of scum and villainy - some for operational reasons, some for Jessika-Pava's-idea-of-a-fun-night-out reasons - and Mos Espa didn't look like either to her. It was plain, but it was cleaner and more solid than anything Rey had seen on Jakku. At least, so far as she could tell from one spaceport bay.

 

Luke knew Tatooine better than her, of course. But that didn't explain why he'd sounded like he was quoting.

 

"Actually that was Mos Eisley," Luke informed her. "Nearly forty years ago." He smiled, and there was an edge of vicious satisfaction to it. "Things have changed."

 

Rey nodded slowly, and slipped her hand inside her sandy-coloured robe to check that her lightsaber was easily accessible. Her blaster, still the one Han Solo had given her for all the quartermasters had repeatedly offered her something lighter than didn't throw slightly left, hung from the blue leather belt stamped with stars and studded with seashells that Finn had given her for Life Day. Rey smoothed her fingers along the seashells, checked the security of the attached holster - in the same style, a present from Poe, Rey suspected the pair of them of coordinating - and wondered exactly how much things had changed, and in which direction.

 

"I don't think you'll find anyone hostile," Luke said gently, as they left the ship behind. "Well. Perhaps later - I want to go out to Mos Eisley and the old homestead tomorrow."

 

"I've heard stories about Tatooine."

 

Luke hummed. "They're probably mostly false."

 

"Admiral Antilles told me most of them." They were being watched, Rey noticed - or no, Luke was being watched, mostly by people who looked local, not encumbered by bags or sorting through ident docs. They looked pleased to see him, and a little awed, and also quite surprised. She could feel the press of interest in the Force; it was different from the way that Luke and Leia both naturally distorted the Force, twin suns exerting an unintended gravity on the space around them.

 

Luke laughed. "Some of those are definitely false. Biggs and I told him a lot of stories just to wind him up."

 

"Who's Biggs?"

 

"He was a friend of mine." Luke's mouth pressed together, a little sad. "We knew each other growing up. He died in the Battle of Yavin, long before you were born."

 

"Oh," Rey said quietly, and said nothing as Luke presented their ident docs to a Twi'lek behind a glassy green screen who was plainly excited to see them both. Rey smiled awkwardly through an effusive welcome to Tatooine for Master Skywalker and his padawan, and was glad when they left.

 

Luke appeared to have a definite end in mind. He led Rey through the streets of Mos Espa, wide streets crowded with stalls and shopfronts and low, sturdy buildings half-whitewashed and provided with small windows against the sun, at some speed. A whisper followed them; Rey listened and could pick up references to Jedi. Under the scorching heat of Tatooine's suns, she was reminded of Jakku where it was never a good idea to stand out too much, and felt very self-conscious of her padawan braid. She had chosen to put her hair up in a single loose bun this morning, and wished she had either left it loose or braided it into a coronet she could pin the braid into. Either way it would have stuck out less.

 

Rey looked around her - if Tatooine was staring she could stare back - and was surprised to notice the cleanliness of the streets, the comparative absence of street children and beggars, and an unusually low number of droid restraining bolts. And there were a lot of droids out and about. Most people who owned droids didn't permit them to move around freely, but there was a droid doing the shopping, another haggling with a man over the price of some street food that looked like intestines to Rey -

 

"Force preserve us," Rey said, coming to a halt in the middle of a spacious circular public court, edged with more shops and a couple of restaurants and surprisingly respectable-looking cantinas, plus a couple of large buildings that were very slightly fancier than most of the other buildings: Rey assumed they had a civic function, although they didn't look as overblown as most of the town halls and city senates she'd seen. There were large signs on them, but they were high up and written in a language Rey did not recognise. Both had pointed roofs flashing with solar panels.

 

The court had a statue in the middle, surrounded by three drinking troughs that were shaded against the sun. It took a few moments for Rey to assimilate the subject of the statue, which was dark and matte, key parts of it picked out in pewter. Eventually, she sorted the shapes out into a large and hideous Hutt, head thrown back and small arms clutching despairingly at the chain around its thick neck, convulsing in death. The chain wrapped around the Hutt, around the heavy red sandstone base of the statue, and ended in the hands of a tall, buxom woman in armour designed more for looks than actual efficacy, her long hair in a braid rippling over her shoulders, her expression ferocious. There was a single word carved deeply into the stone in large letters; smaller names were written all round it, covering the entire base of the statue.

 

The statue looked curiously familiar.

 

"That says Huttslayers," Rey observed, carefully spelling out the largest word in her mind. "It... Er." She looked at Luke for help.

 

He took pity on her. "It's not a very good likeness of Leia, no."

 

"I thought she was... shorter," Rey said weakly.

 

Luke nodded amiably. "This is Liberation Square." He nodded at the statue. "That was Jabba the Hutt; he controlled much of this continent." Luke's lips compressed. "He was a gang lord; held sway over all the organised crime for leagues around, dealt in slaves, ran a very profitable extortion racket... Mos Espa was his capital." He shook his head, and started to walk again. Transfixed, Rey only just remembered to follow him, and had to run a few steps to catch up with Luke, who was moving so swiftly that his cloak billowed behind him.

 

"Han Solo smuggled for Jabba," Luke continued, heading for one of the large, civic-looking buildings, "for five years or so. He built up a debt. Vader froze him in carbonite and sent him to Jabba, who kept him on his wall for a few months. Leia and Chewbacca and Lando and I went to rescue him, and in the course of that rescue, Jabba attempted to enslave Leia." He waved a hand at the statue, in silent description of subsequent events.

 

"I see that went well for Jabba," Rey remarked, climbing several low steps that ran the length of the building and led to a portico.

 

"After his death, the clan fell apart," Luke said, pausing on the threshold. "Tatooine rose in rebellion and cast the Hutts down. The names on the statue are those of the people who died in the civil war. Leia's a symbol because she killed Jabba, but she is also a symbol of their efforts."

 

Rey opened her mouth to ask a question, but Luke raised a hand to forestall her, and walked directly through a pair of open metal doors that reached as high as the building itself into a dark antechamber, where two stone bowls as tall as Rey reposed.

 

Luke bowed deeply. Rey copied him, and tried unobtrusively to peer inside the bowls.

 

"Water and sand," Luke told her, correctly interpreting her curiosity. "Tatooine rituals for the dead. The sand we all return to: the water that gives us life."

 

"There is no death, there is the Force," Rey quoted, curious. She didn't know what Jedi orthodoxy was, exactly, or the relationship of the things Luke taught her to the things Luke's father had been taught as a boy. But she was fairly sure it wasn't what Luke had just said.

 

Luke chuckled. "This is Tatooine," he told her. "The dead are never far from us." His eyes strayed to a shadowed corner of the room, and he smiled. "That's not always a bad thing."

 

He pressed on, and Rey followed after him, eyes darting uneasily about what she was increasingly sure was a temple. They passed through a heavy cloth curtain, and into a broad, softly lit corridor; the solar panels above probably powered the lamps that glowed in alcoves set at regular intervals along its length. A man wearing a white tunic and loose pale grey trousers, tucked into boots and wrapped from the knees down to secure them tight against the leg, sat at a small metal desk. He was scribbling industriously on several flimsis, but got to his feet when they entered.

 

"Jedi Skywalker," he said. "We were not expecting you."

 

"These days," Luke said tranquilly, "I prefer to be unpredictable."

 

The man smiled. "And you've brought an apprentice."

 

Luke nodded. "This is Rey. I wanted her to see the Temple of the Force."

 

"There are few, outside Tatooine," the man said. His eyes lingered on both of them in a way that made Rey uncomfortable; there was an awe in it that reminded her of shrines, of prayers, of people she'd never met asking her for a blessing. She gave them freely - it was only words, after all - but she thought there was more truth in her wishing Finn good luck, or going over Jessika Pava's X-wing with a fine-toothed comb, than in any awkward ‘May the Force be with you’.

 

"We will visit the inner room," Luke said. "To meditate."

 

"I'll see to it that no-one disturbs you," the man said, stepping out from behind the desk with alacrity.

 

Luke shook his head. "The Force flows through all living things, Camya," he said mildly. "We won't evict anyone who is already there, or exclude anyone who comes to worship."

 

Camya nodded a little reluctantly and sat back down. Rey followed Luke down the long echoing corridor until they reached another heavy curtain, this one made of leather, which Luke courteously held back for her. She stepped inside, expecting darkness, and was surprised to find herself surrounded by light. High above, a window let a bright shaft of sunshine into the inner chamber, a round room with flat heavy cushions laid on the floor around a small circular inner wall. Inside that, a kyber crystal lay on a pedestal. It sparkled and shone in the sunlight, but it wasn't so bright that it dazzled Rey; it glowed, steady and bright.

 

Two other people were in the room; a man maybe ten years older than Rey, sitting cross-legged on the cushions and meditating though he didn't strike Rey as having Jedi-like power, and a little girl fidgeting next to him. She looked up at Luke, and her eyes opened wide, her mouth opening in preparation for speech. Luke shook his head and raised a finger to his lips, laying a gentle hand on her small head in benediction; the little girl shut her mouth and nodded importantly.

 

Rey smiled, and the little girl looked at her. For a second, there was something very familiar about those large dark eyes, something that struck Rey sharply, but then the little girl hid her face shyly and the moment was broken. Rey touched the top of her head lightly as Luke had done, and then went to sit with Luke, on the other side of the circle. He settled down to sit cross-legged as Rey reached him, and she copied him; she felt the familiar pulse in the Force that signalled Luke settling into meditate, and joined him, summoning up her visualisations and slipping into the flow of the Force. It was easier here, somehow: the Force felt close to the surface of everyday life, warm and welcoming Rey.

 

It might have been hours or it might have been minutes later: Rey did not know when or why she opened her eyes. She just knew that some ripple in the Force called out to her with a name she had known a long time ago, and - instinctively - she opened her eyes and stared straight into the desert woman's face.

 

She was standing in the centre of the circle where the kyber crystal lay, smiling down at Rey. She was insubstantial, blue and silent, but Rey felt her approval; Rey tried to get to her feet, discovered that her legs had been curled in half for too long to take to it readily, and fell over. The desert woman's smile broadened, and she disappeared. Rey was left to the curious stares of Luke and the two worshippers.

 

"No doubt you had an excellent reason for that," Luke said mildly.

 

"I had a vision," Rey volunteered, peeling herself off the mat.

 

Luke raised his eyebrows expectantly at her.

 

Rey shook her head. "You didn't see it? The Force feels... different here." She hesitated. "Close. But not the same way as in other temples we've visited."

 

"This is a new temple," Luke said. "The Force has always been worshipped on Tatooine one way or another... though whether the old Jedi would recognise the devotion is another matter. Traditions are different."

 

"Like the Guardians of the Whills?" Rey asked. Luke had taught her about the Guardians of the Whills before he told her about any of the other sects that worshipped the Force. His own old Rogue Squadron had been named after the strike team that sacrificed itself to save the Rebellion at the Battle of Scarif - a strike team that contained the last Guardians of the Whills. The order had been resurrected, but lacking the sacred temple of Jedha, its practices were not what they had been. Rey thought Luke felt a debt to those two long-gone Guardians, somehow: a responsibility to keep their names alive.

 

Luke nodded. "As for seeing your vision - I had my eyes closed. I felt a ripple in the Force, but I saw nothing with my conscious eyes." One bushy grey eyebrow rose. "Because, as I said, they were shut."

 

The little girl giggled, and was hushed by her companion. Both Rey and Luke smiled.

 

"It was a person," Rey said. "I've seen her before." She hesitated; she still felt curiously like she wished to keep the desert woman close, and the habit of saying nothing about her was strong. "I'll tell you later."

 

Luke nodded. "We should be moving on, anyway." He hauled himself to his feet with a groan and a remark about his aged joints. Rey snorted and rolled her eyes at him, but helped him up anyway.

 

The little girl's companion, who was now quite red in the face, shushed her preemptively. The little girl scowled up at him; Rey found another smile for her, and stopped as they passed, driven by some instinct she didn't understand. The little girl held out her hands, and Rey clasped them in her own.

 

"May the Force be with you," she said, and felt that there was a weight behind her words; they burned a little in her throat. "What's your name?"

 

The little girl's eyes had gone very round, but she squeezed Rey's hands confidently in return, and did not lower her head. Rey couldn't help but notice that her eyes were grey; maybe they had only seemed dark earlier, some trick of the light.

 

In the back of Rey's head, Maz Kanata's voice echoed; _if you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people._

 

"Elly," the little girl said. She couldn't be more than seven or eight, Rey thought. Maybe a little older. "My name's Elly. What's yours?"

 

"Rey," Rey said, and noticed that Luke was looking sharply at the man with the girl.

 

"Elly," he repeated. The child looked up, but Luke didn't look back. "Are you from the valley out beyond Mos Eisley?"

 

"Used to be," the man said. "I'm Teda Massey." He nodded at Elly. "Elly's my niece. My sister-in-law is a Darklighter. Beru Darklighter?"

 

"Beru Darklighter!" Luke exclaimed, eyes brightening. "Nan Elly and Tad Samuel's youngest!"

 

Teda Massey grinned. "I'm a mechanic; I moved to Mos Espa to work at the spaceport. Beru and my brother came to visit, brought Elly with them." He shook hands with Luke rather shyly. "It's an honour, sir."

 

Rey felt a tug on her jacket and looked down. Elly was staring up at her.

 

"What are they talking about?" the little girl said in a very loud whisper.

 

"Family," Luke smiled, ruffling Elly's hair. "I knew your uncle Biggs. And your mother is named after my aunt, because your mother grew up where I did."

 

"But you're a Jedi."

 

"Jedi have families too, little one," Luke said. "And they have to start somewhere."

 

"Oh," Elly said, clearly very dubious. She attached herself to her uncle and put her thumb in her mouth, watching Luke and Rey with sceptical eyes. Her uncle tried to get her to remove her thumb, then grimaced an apology at Luke, who laughed and waved it away.

 

"Will you be staying long on Tatooine?" Teda asked.

 

Luke shook his head. "Only a few days."

 

"You would be welcome to come for a meal," Teda offered. "I know Beru would love to see you."

 

"That is a very kind offer," Luke said gravely. "My apprentice and I would be pleased to accept."

 

A few moments later, a day and time were agreed, and they all left the inner chamber. They parted company outside the temple, and Teda and Elly walked off to the other side of Liberation Square while Luke and Rey headed for the other building Rey had mentally earmarked as a town hall of some kind.

 

"Were they... family?" Rey asked, testing out the words, and Luke shook his head.

 

"No. The Darklighters were our closest neighbours when I was growing up; my aunt Beru was close friends with Elly Darklighter. Elly named her youngest child after my aunt. Little Beru was only a year or so old when I left Tatooine." Luke walked up another set of stairs. "Nan Elly must have been alive until very recently, if Beru’s daughter is named after her. It's bad luck to name children after the dead. I thought they would rename Beru, since my aunt died when she was only a baby - but they never did."

 

"That's good," Rey said. She couldn't think of anything else to say.

 

"Yes," Luke said, as they passed into a wide hall.

 

"Luke," Rey said quietly, looking around. "Is this Resistance business or Jedi business?"

 

Luke looked enigmatic. He always insisted on the separation of the two; that the Jedi might fight for the Resistance, but they were not automatically of the Resistance. "Both," he said, and swept up to a central desk, where Rey discovered by the enthusiastic welcome they received that this was the central governance hall for this part of Tatooine, and that the governing council sat here, though the representative councils were accommodated elsewhere.

 

To Rey’s surprise, they went to the archives first; she had expected Luke to want to meet with some politician, or for some politician to commandeer his time where he wanted it or not. There was an alcove beside the door, water and sand – Luke stopped to dip his fingers in the water and murmur something; Rey, at a loss, just bowed – and inside there were hundreds of thousands of datatapes stored on hundreds of shelves, and data stations that could read them, some very old-fashioned and carefully maintained. A metal door over to one side had a glass window in it: Rey went and examined it, and realised that it was a pressure- and climate-controlled room for storing more delicate flimsis. It was possible, she thought, tilting her head at an awkward angle to see through the glass to the inside of the room, that there were even some papers in there. Rey had never even seen paper before last month’s visit to the Great Library of Dantooine.

 

“I shouldn’t think any relevant material about your family would be in there,” Luke said, pulling datatapes from the shelves. “That goes too far back.”  


“What?” Rey said.

 

“We need to find your family,” Luke said. “This is where I think we should start.” He laid a stack of datatapes down. “If Kylo Ren works out what we’ve worked out, and manages to track down any living family members you may have, they will be in grave danger.”

 

Rey swallowed as she joined Luke by the shelves. Her throat felt suddenly tight. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

 

Luke laid a light, understanding hand on her shoulder, and let it stay there until Rey looked down at her feet and nodded. “How’s the reading coming along?” he said lightly.

 

“Much better,” Rey said, examining the shelves closely. Her lessons were irregular, given the various demands of her role, Poe's, and Finn's, but they had never stopped, not even after Tashel Quartus, no matter how awkward the three of them were. The shelf Luke was taking tapes from gave a date about fifty years previously, and all the tapes he had taken down had red dots on them. A plaque on the wall indicated that red dots were records from Mos Espa itself; other symbols and colours indicated copies of tapes from other centres.

 

“At least some of these will be in Huttese, probably,” Luke said, squinting at the spines of the five datatapes he’d pulled down. “I’m not completely clear on my grandmother’s history, but I know my aunt and uncle had a special hatred for the Hutts on her account, so it’s possible she was owned by a Hutt at one time or another. Her last owner was a mechanic named Watto in Mos Espa, but I think he preferred to deal in Basic. The manumission will probably have been drafted in both Huttese and Basic, but I don’t know if both copies will have survived... I know you speak Huttese. Can you read it?”

 

“Probably,” Rey said. “What are we looking for? Your grandmother’s ownership papers?”

 

“Not exactly,” Luke said. “We’re looking for her manumission by Cliegg Lars, because that will detail her history on Tatooine. Negates every contract of purchase that may ever have existed. I saw a copy of it once, but it was lost or destroyed when the stormtroopers attacked our farm. There will have been several copies, though, and Great-Uncle Cliegg probably lodged the original with the moisture farmers’ cooperative for safekeeping.”

 

“You know a lot about this, for someone freeborn.”

 

“My aunt loved to help others,” Luke said. “My uncle had a strong sense of fairness and duty. Both of them knew my grandmother very well and neither of them liked slavers at all.” He selected a sixth datatape from the shelf, and gave her three of them. “Let’s make a start. Let me know if you have any trouble with the Huttese.”

 

They sat in silence at two of the computer stations for an hour, Luke skimming rapidly through datatapes before a historian hurried in and seized on him; Rey said she was willing to try to work alone for a while, and listened with half an ear while Luke tried to answer questions about the Tatooine presence in the Rebellion, and the early days of the Tatooine Free System. Pleas that he hadn’t been present for most of the foundation of the Tatooine Free System, and had in fact been busy with re-founding the Jedi Order, were swatted aside on the basis that his perspective was valuable.

 

Rey kept reading, looking for names: Cliegg Lars, Shmi Skywalker. The Huttese was slower to pick out, its syntax very different from Basic and the way proper nouns were treated different, but Rey found it more phonetic than Basic, and therefore in some ways easier. She only had to ask Luke for help with a few words, although that meant she was almost captured by an excitable historian who was very keen to know the identity of a young Jedi apprenticed to a homegrown Tatooine hero – Rey, who had seen Luke falling asleep into his caf over the breakfast table and being chased by a swearing Artoo too often to really think of him as a hero, boggled – and was also incidentally curious as to the research Rey was working on. Fortunately, Luke was able to divert her, though he looked distinctly hassled by the time he returned to his seat at the datastation and began skimming through the tapes again. They were searchable, but Shmi and its variations were common names, and Cliegg had been a comparatively wealthy man with extensive business dealings; Rey was finding it slow going hauling through each record trying to work out what it was and if it related to the right person. It didn’t help that nobody had bothered to spell a slave’s name correctly, either. So far she counted three different spellings of Shmi that clearly referred to the same woman.

  
Rey found Shmi Skywalker’s manumission towards the beginning of the second tape Luke had given her, and let out a cry of triumph that unfortunately coincided with the arrival of an elderly woman in brick-red robes patterned with beige and grey, her head crowned with a net of shiny grey stones. Rey reddened, and wished she could hide behind the computer station, but the woman only raised grey eyebrows.

 

“If only my arrival always excited so much interest,” she said mildly.

 

Luke’s mouth twitched, but he rose and bowed formally. Rey followed his example. “Speaker Mores,” he said. “I am honoured by your presence.”

 

“I’d tell you I was honoured by your presence if it weren’t for the fact that I am absolutely sure you’ve already been trailed around Mos Espa by overexcited hero-worshippers,” Speaker Mores responded, and bowed in return. “Jedi Skywalker, it is well to see you return to the galaxy.”

 

“I didn’t go very far,” Luke said vaguely.

 

Rey, who had needed a lot of help from Chewbacca and several poor benighted astronavigators to chart the Falcon’s course to Ahch-To, stared fixedly at the shelf opposite her.

 

Luke coughed. “Speaker Mores, my apprentice, Rey. Rey, Speaker Mores is the Law Speaker for the Espa continent, and the spokeswoman for the Tatooine Free System. Like a senator.”

 

Rey, who was no good at politics and had got roughly as far as ‘this woman is important’, bowed again, and received a gracious nod in return. “Luke,” she said, “I found the manumission.”

 

“Where?” Luke said, and she showed him on the screen. “Excellent.” He clapped her on the shoulder; Rey was suddenly reminded of Han. “If you can find the original contract of purchase in the appendices and pick out the owner’s name, then all you need are the records of the slaves they owned, which will probably tell us the names of any relatives. I know she was born into slavery. Look in the censuses; Jabba ran them, so they’re thorough. He liked to know what he was owed. More Huttese for you, I’m afraid.”

 

His voice had hardened when he spoke about Jabba, in the way it did when he was discussing topics he didn’t want to discuss any further. Rey wondered if she could get her hands on a few history books about Tatooine, and find out what Tatooinians besides Luke had thought about Jabba and his control of the planet. She got the feeling that she wouldn’t like anything she read.

 

Rey glanced at Speaker Mores, who looked extremely curious.

 

“Jedi business, I take it,” the Speaker said, folding her papery hands.

 

 “Yes,” Luke said. “A little research. Speaker, I am at your disposal. Rey, I’ll come and find you when the Speaker has had enough of my company.”

 

“You always were modest,” the Speaker remarked.

  
Rey looked at Luke, wearing the Force as casually as his cloak, and wondered if _modest_ was the right way of putting it. Still, she wasn’t going to argue with someone who had survived a desert planet for at least sixty years, so she said nothing, and returned to her research.

 

By the time Luke returned, several hours later, Rey had found two sets of Gardulla the Hutt’s census records, which named every slave she owned. Anakin Skywalker’s name was correctly spelled in the one he appeared in, but since he was only two years of age at the time and the census took place every ten years, Rey had no hope of using his name to find his mother’s again. For some reason, it had been spelled Scimi in the census record next to Anakin’s – Scimi Skywalker, female human slave, mechanic and light duties, thirty-three. In testimony to the commonness of the name Shmi, Rey had found three others with the same name among the hundred household slaves Gardulla had owned, and that wasn’t counting the others who had worked for Gardulla further afield. There were only a few Skywalkers, though; that was positive. Rey had made a note of their names, ages and occupations.

 

Rey sincerely hoped that Shmi had adopted the name Skywalker by the time of the previous census, and had been one of Gardulla’s house-slaves at twenty-three as well as at thirty-three, or it was going to be very difficult to find her. 

 

“How are you doing?” Luke asked.

 

She handed him a stack of datatapes. “These are finished,” she said. “I’ve found her at Gardulla’s with Anakin and I’m pretty sure she’s in this other census somewhere. There are two siblings listed, and one of them has children. The other’s only fifteen, so he might have had kids as well.” Rey hesitated. “It’s going to be a big job.”

 

“We can keep researching,” Luke said calmly. “Even if we’re not here, it will be simple to relay requests to the chief archivist, who will keep them confidential.” He tapped his fingers on the datatapes. “Most likely there are still a few Skywalkers left under different names, scattered across Tatooine, possibly across the galaxy. But Kylo Ren is unlikely to find them, if they have been using different names for, oh, two or three generations. And he doesn’t know Tatooine. Leia and I very seldom brought him here. The last time he was twelve and he burnt all the skin off his nose and said he never wanted to come back.”

 

“But… what about my family?” Rey asked, hating herself for the way her voice went small.

 

“We’ll find them,” Luke said simply, and then raised his eyebrows at her. “Even if we have to go back to Jakku.”

 

“Wouldn’t that be easier?” Rey asked.

 

“Probably,” Luke said frankly, slotting the datatapes back onto the shelves. “Which is why we will do it, when we have the chance. There were other matters that brought us here to Tatooine.”

 

Rey pulled a face at him. “Yes, and you still won’t tell me what they are.”  


“Patience, young one,” Luke told her, sounding like he was quoting again, and enjoying himself immensely. “We have a great deal to discuss. Do you have the names of the siblings recorded in this census? And their offspring?”

 

Rey nodded, and transmitted the file she had been working in on her personal datapad to Luke’s. “I’ll make a start on the second census.”

 

Whoever the clerk had been who carried out the second census was a better speller, and Rey was lucky: Shmi Skywalker had evidently been called so from a very young age. She was present at twenty-three, as were her three siblings. Rey made a note of the additional sibling, a child of three years old called Merel who hadn’t appeared in the previous census, and passed the name and age to Luke. There were still no names for Shmi’s parents.

 

Rey checked her chrono and found that there was only an hour remaining until the archives closed; spurred on, she found the two previous census records and searched for the name Skywalker. A picture began to emerge of a family; a Kafren Skywalker was recorded as having four offspring by Lylan Burner, the oldest of whom was Shmi. Rey updated her file and started to search for the names: Lylan Burner was sent away to the salt mines on the other side of the continent in the year of Merel’s birth, Shmi’s younger brother Lylo disappeared from the records aged nineteen, Shmi’s mother Kafren died not long after Merel was born, and Gardulla sold both of Shmi’s living siblings. Merel had been twelve, and Onor had been twenty-two, mother to three children including a pair of twins, all called Skywalkers.

 

Rey idly tried to sketch a family tree on her datapad, and rapidly developed a headache.

 

“Statistically speaking,” Luke said, showing her his own research – he had tracked Onor and Merel, Onor to the continent on the other side of Tatooine where she’d been sold and Merel to a spice merchant in Mos Espa – “you’re probably descended from Onor. She had five surviving children in all. But I’m interested by Merel.”

 

Rey looked at him, puzzled.

 

“My uncle Owen always told me my father was a navigator on a spice freighter,” Luke said, mouth twisting half-affectionately, blue eyes very far away. “Merel Skywalker is listed as a pilot and navigator. Her owner had her trained in cartography.”

 

Rey felt her breath come short. “That would have been expensive,” she said. Cartography and astronavigation were difficult skills to teach yourself. It varied constantly with the size of ship and propulsion system, and it got riskier the further you tried to fly; Rey had only had a limited understanding of the relevant calculations and a crash course delivered by the Resistance before her departure for Ahch-To, plus the promise of proper lessons. Besides the investment involved in imparting the skill, teaching a slave how to travel the stars would have been a calculated risk; Merel Skywalker’s owner must have believed that she would not run, or that she had nowhere to go.  


Luke nodded. “But this is a smuggler’s planet. At least, it certainly used to be, although things have changed… a little. Speaker Mores and I discussed that. If Merel were clever and lucky and talented, she could have made enough money charting specialist hyperspace routes to buy her freedom.”

 

Rey darted back to her datastation and searched for manumission papers with the Skywalker name. Nothing came up; she ejected the tape with shaking hands and slotted another in, waited impatiently for it to load and searched again. On the third try, she found Merel Skywalker, who had bought her freedom at the age of twenty-six.

 

Her occupation was listed as _navigator: freighter class II_.

 

“Well,” Luke said, “that’s promising,” and a droid came to tell them that the archive was about to close.


	9. Chapter 9

_When Rey is fifteen she nearly dies. It is a swift sickness, brought by traders from Tuanul, two days away on a good speeder, and there is medicine for it, but Rey has moved to her AT-AT far from the Outpost, and the safety of nobody being able to find her quickly becomes the danger of no-one knowing where she is. Not, she thinks, that anyone would lift a finger to save her. Well, Unkar Plutt might do, under the terms of whatever mysterious agreement he had made with her family. But he long ago made it clear that she worked for her keep, and she thinks she is not yet so good a scavenger that he'd give her medicine on credit. Even if he did - she might never escape the resulting debt. He might make her his slave for real._

_Rey barely manages to find the strength to think these things as she lies in bed, too weak to leave it, sweating a fever, shivering with the cold, her heart beating a tripping rhythm that feels wrong and the world swimming around her. She is grateful that she locked up carefully the previous night; she is easy prey like this. She wishes, dimly, that she had more water stored. She hopes, childishly, that her parents, her family, the desert woman, someone will know how ill she is, and will come to her, save her..._

_Rey drifts into an uneasy, feverish sleep as the Jakku sun rises high in the sky, and dreams that she is lying in a grassy meadow seeded with wildflowers under a friendly blue sky and a sun that doesn't strip the skin from your bones, and that she doesn't feel weak, only very light. She hears someone calling her name, and sits upright; there are grey, lumpen creatures around, but the voice did not come from them. Rey looks about and sees the desert woman._

_Here, my blood, she calls, here, I'm here, and waves a hand._

_The desert woman hurries over. You are sick, my loved one, she murmurs, her hands passing over Rey's forehead and chest._

_I'm dying, Rey says. She doesn't care much now. This place is pretty._

_Yes, the desert woman says. Have you seen anyone else here?_

_No, Rey says._

_Then there is still time._

_For what?_

_The desert woman coaxes Rey to lie back down, her head in the desert woman's lap. She hums to Rey and sings snatches of songs; tells her stories, keeps her quiet, takes her hair from its buns and runs her hands through it. Rey's eyes slip closed and she floats, safe and calm._

_She hears another woman's gentle voice, high and sweet with a strange crisp accent, and a man who sounds lower and harder; the small cool hand that rests on her shoulder is not the desert woman's, and the large calloused one that covers her eyes when she would open them is not the desert woman's either, but Rey is not afraid._

_Sleep, Rey, the desert woman murmurs. Sleep. Heal._

_Rey wakes to her stifling AT-AT on Jakku in the grey pre-dawn hours. Her blankets are wringing with sweat, and her fever is broken._

 

 

 

***

 

Luke insisted that they needed to rise at dawn in order to make the journey to Mos Eisley. Rey sympathised with the desire to avoid the heat of the day, even in a covered, temperature-controlled speeder – she, too, had grown up in a desert, and Niima Outpost had been even drier and more devoid of cover than Tatooine – but she had slept badly, and was tired. The family they had met in the Jedi Temple had offered them hospitality for the night as well as an evening meal, and Luke had clearly felt that it would be a breach of manners to say no, so they had stayed with the Masseys and the Darklighters, Luke talking late into the night with people whose memories brushed the last fading edges of his childhood.

 

Rey understood that so well that it hurt, so she’d sat with Elly and let the little girl teach her a finger game, wondering if she had once known games like Elly’s and had forgotten them, setting aside play for survival so young. Elly had fallen asleep early on – simply rested her head on Rey’s thigh and closed her eyes – and Rey  had looked down at her and marvelled that a child should trust her so easily. She’d touched the end of Elly’s braid, picked it up and set it down gently, and asked herself how her family could ever have abandoned a child of Elly’s age – how a person could do that.

 

After a little while, Teda Massey had come across and picked up his niece and carried her to bed; Luke had smiled at Rey, and she’d smiled back. She’d been sitting a little further back to give Luke and the Darklighter family space, not wanting to intrude on their reminiscences – and also unsure of the protocol. Rey knew exactly how to behave among other scavengers, and was (slowly, alongside Finn, with Poe’s help) learning how to behave among the Resistance. She was less sure how to act on Tatooine, and all she could do was follow Luke’s lead. She didn’t seem to have hugely offended anyone yet, but it was strange, stumbling through rituals that felt like they should have been familiar, half-recognising unspoken rules and turns of phrase that she couldn’t remember hearing on Jakku.

  
Maybe she was a Skywalker, after all; maybe even generations later, the practices Merel Skywalker would have known found an echo in Rey’s mind.

 

The thought had made her feel warm, though the desert night chill still crept through the heavy metal shutters.  Rey had tucked her loose jacket around herself more tightly, leaned back into the cushion propped up against the wall, and listened in silence while Luke talked about the Jundland Wastes and Tosche Station, about vaporators and speeders and illicit podracing.

 

He’d sounded so happy, and Rey couldn’t get that out of her head. For all that Tatooine was harsh, and had been more so when Luke was a boy – Rey had lived in a settlement largely controlled by Unkar Plutt; she knew what it was like to be under the thumb of a robber baron – he had had a happy childhood, and the memories of it still had the power to make him smile. Rey had noticed that Luke didn’t often really smile.

 

Rey had been given plenty of space to sleep, though Teda Massey apologised that there wasn’t more room. She thought the pallet she was given had made a very comfortable bed, and there were heavy homespun wool blankets and pillows to snuggle into, more than Rey could ever have dreamed of when she lived in her AT-AT. The Darklighters’ and Masseys’ Jakku equivalents would have fired at her if they saw her on the horizon, and yet here – a little less than two years after Finn had tumbled into Niima Outpost and dragged her into trouble – Rey was an honoured guest. The kind of person you apologised to for not making them comfortable enough.

  
It had made Rey’s head spin. She was fairly sure it was that, and not the small glass of lethal firewater Luke had permitted her to try even though he’d warned her to drink plenty of actual water afterwards. She hoped she could buy a bottle somewhere and take it home to the Resistance: the pilots would crow over alcohol they hadn’t had to distil themselves, and Finn was always fun when he was a little drunk, tactile and gregarious and full of humour, curling into Poe’s side and smiling at Rey with several different sorts of promise at once. It didn't happen often, and certainly hadn't happened recently, but Rey kept the memory of every time it did like a treasure, something to keep close and dream of sometimes.

 

She had missed them that night, with that curious half-familiarity of the family dinner and Merel Skywalker’s name running around her head and refusing to still. She'd sent them a message - something quick, brief and bland - and usually the discipline of organising her thoughts and putting them into correctly spelled words helped, but not this time. Maybe she could blame her racing mind on the firewater, at least, the same way Luke had peered into her sleepy eyes when they left Teda Massey’s house at dawn and teased her about her alcohol tolerance.

 

Rey been troubled enough to make sleep very hard to grasp. She had closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind, but it had been too difficult. She hadn’t been able to get rid of the feeling that she was close to something, something just out of her reach. In the end, she’d got out of bed and turned out half the contents of her satchel, searching for the cheap, soft scarf she had carried halfway round the galaxy by now. General Organa had bought it for her when Rey was shivering her way around a meeting of the Provisional Senate on an ice planet, entirely occupied with pretending not to check her toes still worked and not to notice the way people shied from her because she was like the General. Threepio had delivered it to her with the words ‘General Organa says Jedi are warrior monks, not martyrs, and to stop trying to pretend you aren’t cold’ uttered so loudly Kaydel Ko Connix had overheard and sneezed with helpless laughter, fifth cup of caf sloshing everywhere. The scarf was green and edged with small red and silver flowers, and Rey had carried it around her shoulders, worn it as a skirt, slept under it, draped it over BB-8 to make her screech with annoyance, tucked it over Finn while he was sleeping, and generally dragged it from pillar to post. It smelt like home, like Poe’s hair products and Finn’s astringent soap, the flowering vines that curled over the base and ripped up arrays if they were allowed to flourish too vigorously, the plasleather seats in the Falcon, lubricant oil for droids’ joints and freighter fuel. Rey had wrapped the scarf around her borrowed pillow on Tatooine, laid her head back down, and tried to centre herself.

 

 _I am Rey_ , she’d told herself, over and over again, hoping it would stick. _I am Rey, and I am a Jedi, and that’s all I need to know._

 

She had fallen asleep eventually, but she didn’t get enough rest to make her face the dawn with any cheerfulness at all, even for Elly’s sake; the little girl had decided that Rey was fascinating, and really, wholeheartedly wanted her to enjoy a true Tatooine breakfast. Rey had managed to smile weakly at her and stay polite, even as she yawned her way through breakfast and said goodbye to the Darklighters and Masseys, before going to hire a speeder with Luke. Luke had said that there was no point taking the _Falcon_ , partly because Mos Eisley had few facilities large enough to land such a ship and he didn’t want to have anyone cleared out on his account, and partly because the _Falcon_ wasn’t in great shape. She had started making some wobbly noises that Rey did not know but Luke and Chewbacca had a collective bad feeling about as they hit Tatooine’s atmosphere, and Chewbacca wanted at least a few days to go over her with Artoo properly.

 

Rey suspected that part of it was that Luke really wanted the chance to haggle brutally for a speeder, though. The Toydarian running the hire system wasn’t as well-disposed towards Luke, or as awed by him, as half of Tatooine seemed to be, so Luke was treated almost as a normal citizen would have been - if normal citizens were as capable of smiling ruthlessness in a good cause as Luke was. Rey was no mean haggler herself, since even if Unkar Plutt hadn’t allowed any argument, nothing else on Jakku had a fixed price, but she hung back and watched Luke deliver a masterclass.

 

Luke pronounced a blue four-seater speeder barely acceptable and paid half of what the Toydarian had originally asked for its hire.

 

“Miserly Jedi scum,” grunted the Toydarian in Huttese.

 

Rey opened her mouth to object, but Luke made a slight gesture with one hand and smiled sweetly at the Toydarian.

 

“Maybe next time don’t assume you’re talking to an idiot offworlder, and give a more realistic price,” he suggested, in the same language, with a near-flawless Tatooine accent and a highly unflattering inflection on the form of ‘you’ used. “I haven’t been off Tatooine so long that my brains are fried in my skull.”

 

The Toydarian issued an expressive noise and buzzed away; Luke gave a satisfied smile.

 

Rey wrinkled her nose at both of them. “I’ll drive,” she told Luke.

 

Rey did not drive, though Luke promised her she could on the way back. Luke was an extremely good pilot in space; he was just as good on the ground. Rey could feel the Force hum like a pleased lothcat as Luke drew on it, easy and instinctive, as much part of him as his sight or hearing. The Force wasn't that easy for her to use yet; she didn't automatically dip into it. Rey put her feet up and stared out of the speeder's windscreen as Luke steered them expertly over the desert road, occasionally swearing at slight changes from the safe paths he remembered.

 

"We were going to talk about whether this is Jedi business or Resistance business," Rey said, when they were half an hour out of Mos Espa, and the two suns were well up in the sky.

 

“We were going to talk about several things,” Luke said, lifting the speeder over a slow-moving herd of bantha with effortlessly perfect judgement and flicking a hand gesture Rey didn’t know at the herder. “That was one of them.”

 

Rey folded her arms and crossed her ankles.

 

 “As I said,” Luke continued, “it’s both. Part of the reason we are here is because I wanted you to visit the Temple, and to see some of this part of Tatooine. It’s a place where the Force is close to the surface. There are many like it, all across the galaxy, but this is the one where my father was born, where I grew up, where Ben – Obi-Wan Kenobi – lived. My father was a great Jedi; so was Ben, in a very different way. There are… echoes of their lives, here. Leia says there are echoes of my life, but I can’t tell those apart from memories.”

 

Rey glanced across at Luke. He often downplayed his own skills, but he never denied them, and he never denied the general fact of his power. He could say _I am powerful_ in the same breath as _you just need to have the knack_.

 

“Leia has had to become particularly skilled at distinguishing Force visions from memories and thoughts, for a number of reasons,” Luke said. “She wrote a monograph on it nearly twenty years ago, in a quiet period.” He swooped around an enormous dark sand-frigate with centimetres to spare; a Jawa waved a fist and shrieked at him. “I remember Ben – Han and Leia’s Ben, that is - trying to read it; he always got a terrible headache, and ended up lying to Leia about whether he’d finished it or not.”

 

Rey did not reply. She was opposed to humanising Kylo Ren on general principle: the only humanising thing about him she wanted to see was him kneeling at her feet with her lightsaber at his throat, ready to face justice for everything he’d done.

 

“I thought your father left Tatooine when he was a baby,” she said eventually.

 

“No,” Luke said. “He was only a child, but not a _very_ young child. Nine or ten. But he blazed in the Force, Rey…”

 

Rey said nothing.

 

Luke coughed. “He left a mark. A very distinct mark. I grew up with it, so I didn’t notice until I came back to Tatooine a fully trained Jedi. You can feel it in what used to be the slave quarter at Mos Espa, although the street layout has been so completely changed everything feels strange.”

 

“So you wanted me to… see somewhere the Force is very strong?” Rey blinked. “Like Ahch-To?”

 

“The Force is not as kind here as it is on Ahch-To,” Luke said dryly. “Force-users here have had to be far harder than most of those who lived out their lives in prayer and reflection on Ahch-To. Yes, there was turmoil there once, too, but there were many more centuries of peace and ritual. There are patterns any Force-user can feel. Neither I nor my father grew up with any of that structure, and Ben abandoned most of the regulating structure he was raised with during the Clone Wars. I don’t know how he cared for himself during his exile here, but he was only one Jedi.”

 

“It feels familiar,” Rey said. The words fell from her lips without her knowing where they came from, but when she examined them, they were true. Rey could feel the Force tugging at her fingers and face here, coaxing and wheedling with tongues of fire, like the hottest, driest days on Jakku. Days she had stockpiled portions and water for, days when the possibility of salvage wasn’t worth the chance of sunstroke.

 

Luke glanced over at her.

 

“Not in a bad way,” Rey said.

 

“Well,” Luke said, thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll have to visit Jakku.” He smiled. “I expect Niima Outpost will have your name all over it.”

 

“Not _literally_ ,” Rey said, feeling her cheeks burn. “So this is a lesson.”

 

“Yes,” Luke said. “And it’s also Leia sending me to do some of her less dirty work.”  


Rey sorted through that sentence carefully. “The Resistance business.”  


“Yes.” Luke took a turning Rey couldn’t see: it was like he had just veered off in a given direction that made sense to him, but didn’t really seem marked. She stared hard at the sand ahead, and eventually picked out something that might have been a deliberate path. She could see low buildings ahead, and the glint of a space-capable yacht coming into land. “That’s Mos Eisley, incidentally. We won’t be stopping long. The Resistance business is the other reason we are here, and the reason we will be returning to Mos Espa tonight, because I have a meeting with Speaker Mores and the High Council tomorrow and I need my beauty sleep.”

 

“ _Luke_ ,” Rey said, being – by this point – intimately familiar with Luke Skywalker’s ability to talk round and round a point until you were dizzy, and then innocently ask if you followed his reasoning.

 

Luke smirked, and then smoothed the expression away as if there had never been anything there. It lurked around his mouth still, mischievous. Rey thought Han might have smiled like that, sometimes. “You have to understand that the Resistance seeks to restore the Republic… again. The Republic fell twice; the first time to Emperor Palpatine, who made it the Empire, shortly before I was born. However, it had been in the middle of a war for years – the Clone Wars, orchestrated by Palpatine, who took advantage of existing and often legitimate grievances against the Republic on behalf of people called Separatists.”

 

He sounded like General Organa now, except that Rey couldn’t imagine General Organa speaking ill of the Republic. “Ask anyone on Tatooine who’s older than me,” Luke continued. “There was no difference, here, between the Republic and the Empire. This far out, the Republic simply didn’t care. Slavery flourished; Tatooine was controlled by the Hutts. Nobody came to enforce the rights the Republic was supposed to guarantee. So Tatooine, once it freed itself, was not inclined to join the New Republic. Not even for Leia Huttslayer or Luke Skywalker.”

 

“You would never have asked them to,” Rey guessed.

 

“No,” Luke said, serene. “You can’t imagine how much Leia and I argued over that.”  
  
Rey kept to herself the fact that she could. Mos Eisley loomed larger and larger on the horizon.

 

“Tatooine remains free,” Luke persisted, “and largely unmolested. It’s part of the Tatooine Free System; they have an effective defence force. Bush pilots, mostly, but as Wedge Antilles will tell you, a good podracer is a valuable person to have in the cockpit of a spacecraft.”

 

Admiral Antilles had taken one look at Rey laughing as she hopped out of Poe’s X-wing, said “Ye gods and little fishes, _another one_ , don’t tell me she’s a womp-rat ace too,” and taken a very long drink from a corroded-looking hipflask. Rey kept this to herself as well.

 

“The system also has… business interests… everywhere,” Luke said, slowing as they entered Mos Eisley’s city walls. “Everyone owes them a debt; everyone buys something from them. They have enforced their neutrality carefully. It’s made them the greatest safe haven for refugees this side of Naboo. However, they have also refused to enter the war on anyone’s side, and if you ask me, the only reason the First Order hasn’t really gone after them is the fact that Darth Vader grew up here.” His face hardened as he brought the speeder to a careful stop. “Kylo Ren has a fixation.” His knuckles whitened as his hands clenched around the controls. "You may have noticed..."  


 

Rey waited.

 

"I never said this," Luke said eventually. "I don't think you're likely to repeat it. I'm sure Finn already knows, and I imagine Dameron is close enough to both of you and to Intelligence that he's already guessed." He lifted his head, staring straight out of the windscreen.

 

"I understand," Rey said quietly.

 

"Ren's fixation is particularly dangerous to you and to Leia. You're still an unknown quantity, and he has a... a blind spot where Leia is concerned." Luke took a deep breath. "He knows what both Leia and I are capable of doing - what, in some ways, Leia would _like_ to do, in terms of exercising power. Leia is capable of bending the galaxy to her will as surely as I am, if not in the same ways, and sometimes, she is tempted." He fell silent. "When I see what's become of the world we hoped we had made, I understand that temptation."

 

Rey held her breath.

 

"Ren doesn't understand why she won't take the power the Force offers her, every single day she's alive," Luke continued. "He doesn't understand why you won't accept the power the Dark side can offer you."

 

“He thinks we can be turned,” Rey said. She met Luke’s eyes. He looked very grim and very old.

 

"He'll be all the more convinced of it if he finds out you're a Skywalker," Luke said baldly. "Which is why we need to find your blood family and keep them under wraps as long as possible, especially if they share the Skywalker talent for getting into minds."

 

Rey swallowed, and thought of the battles she'd already fought, the battles yet to come; the time spent bolstering confidence and mental defences to offer some partial protection, the time spent soothing grieving individuals, reeling from the Knights' attacks on their minds. They were stretched thin enough; even two more Knights of Ren, however unwilling, with a natural skill for using the Force on others' minds would be hard to counter.

 

"You haven't faced Kylo Ren in battle yet," Luke said. "Rey - when you do - be _careful_."

 

Rey met his eyes, and nodded.

 

After a long moment, Luke looked away. "Tatooine is key," he murmured. "The furthest thing from the bright centre of the universe. I would never have thought it, when I was your age..."

 

Rey let the silence settle, like dust over time.

 

“In any case,” Luke said eventually, “the Free System may be persuaded to come to the Resistance's aid. Leia thinks that two pieces of information we now have – the specs on Starkiller and our intelligence estimates of the First Order’s ability to reproduce it, and Finn’s testimony about the stormtrooper programme – may sway Speaker Mores and the Councils to providing material aid to the Resistance.”

 

“Because the stormtroopers are slaves,” Rey said.

 

“Yes,” Luke replied, quiet but not soft. “Because the stormtroopers are slaves. And there is nothing the Free System hates more than slavery.” 

 

He settled the speeder into a convenient stopping place. “Stay here and watch the speeder while I buy lunch. Mind out; Mos Eisley isn’t the most law-abiding of neighbourhoods even these days. I was never allowed to come here alone.”

 

“Nothing alive for me, please,” Rey said, climbing out of the speeder at the same time Luke did and pulling her staff from where she had left it across the back seat of the speeder. She had yet to recover from the last time Luke had brought her dinner that wriggled. It was a bridge too far for someone who had grown up on reconstituted protein portions.

 

“You need to broaden your horizons, padawan,” Luke advised her mournfully.

 

“My horizons are plenty broad enough,” Rey said, taking a firm grip on her staff. “I like dinner to be dead before I eat it.”  


Luke shrugged, and casually flashed the metal hilt of his lightsaber at a small boy who had been about to pick-pocket him. The boy gasped something about Jedi in heavily-accented Huttese as he snatched his hand back and scuttled away. Rey didn’t hear if it was an insult or a prayer.

 

“Great,” Rey said, tapping her staff on the sandy bedrock. “We’ll be swarmed.”  


Luke smiled cryptically. “Try to refrain from getting your lightsaber out,” he said, and turned with a sweep of his grey robe.

 

Rey sighed, and settled in to watch the speeder. Already, curious people were drifting by a little more slowly, eyeing her carefully. She returned the looks with the same expression that made her respected, if not feared, on Jakku – only softened a little, given the circumstances. Nobody here had tried to kill her or steal her food.

 

 

By the time Luke came back, Rey was engaged in an energetic argument in Huttese with someone trying to sell her an amulet to ward off the Sand People, which – in this instance – was code for ‘I want you not paying attention to the speeder so you won’t notice when my friend sneaks up and jacks it’.

 

“Thank you,” Luke said, gently taking the woman by the shoulder and moving her out of his way, away from the speeder. “We have no need of amulets.”

 

The woman’s jaw dropped. “ _Skywalker_ ,” she said.

 

“Speaking,” Luke said.

 

“I thought the girl seemed familiar,” the woman said in Basic, and shook her head in disgust. “Damned Jedi. You ruin my business.”  
  
“Oh really?” Luke said, with gentle interest.

 

The woman’s accomplice got to the point where he could make a rapid dash for the speeder. Rey flipped over the speeder to confront him, causing him to stumble backwards into a wall, and say some rather more emphatic things about the Jedi than his partner in crime had.

 

Rey informed him that he was a no-good sand-eating thief and deserved far worse than a few bruises.

 

“Stop playing with your food or I’ll leave without you,” Luke remarked, back in the speeder’s driving seat.

 

Rey exchanged a few rude gestures with the would-be thief and climbed into her seat, belting herself in. Luke had put the cartons of food on the back seat; Rey put her staff in the footwell as Luke flew them out of Mos Eisley: a sign painted on the city wall as they exited gave Anchorhead, Anchorhead Valley, and Tosche Station as possible destinations.

 

“My uncle and aunt had a homestead at the far end of Anchorhead Valley,” Luke said absently. “A farm. The Larses had lived there for five or six generations; it was a good place, the farm was profitable. But not very safe,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “The Darklighters lived a bit closer to town. Beru says they still live there…”

 

His voice drifted off, and they drove in silence for a while. Rey fiddled with a corner of her short robe, and rebraided her hair into the plaited bun General Organa had taught her. It was increasingly obvious to Rey that the three small buns she usually wore screamed _off-worlder_ on Tatooine, and she didn’t like standing out that much. The plaited bun seemed more inconspicuous: Rey had seen several women wear something similar, although typically it was low on the nape of the neck rather than high towards the crown of the head as General Organa had taught Rey.

 

“You were going to tell me about your vision,” Luke prompted, suddenly enough that Rey dropped two hairgrips and had to fish for them on the floor of the speeder. “In the Temple.”

 

“It was… I don’t know if it was a vision,” Rey hedged, still not sure how much she wanted to tell Luke. “I mean, I’ve seen her before. I dreamed about her when I was young – I haven’t dreamed about her since… I don’t know, years. But I thought I saw her in the medical bay with Finn, before I left to get you, and I’m sure I saw her in the Temple.” Rey hesitated. “She smiled at me.”

 

“Do you know who she is?” Luke said, calm and practical.

 

“No,” Rey said. “We never used names. She told me to call her my blood.”

 

“A relative, perhaps,” Luke suggested, “or someone with an affinity to you. Your mother?”

 

“No,” Rey said. She didn’t know why she was so sure. “She would have told me.” Rey pushed the last pin into her bun. “She used to… teach me things. Ways to survive.”

 

“Hmm,” Luke said. “A Force ghost.” He turned the speeder and gunned the engine, aiming directly for a high plateau, reddish brown in the distance and torn with dark fissures. “Few Jedi have the trick of seeing them, but I think most are capable of it… if they trouble to learn. It isn’t easy, for most of us. I myself have a few slightly less than corporeal counsellors.”

 

“Who?” Rey asked, fascinated.

 

Luke grinned. “Doubtless they will reveal themselves to you in time. Leia spent most of her early childhood with our mother watching over her, but I have never seen her consciously. And Leia hasn’t seen her for ten years.”

 

Rey wondered what it would be like not to see the desert woman for ten years, and shuddered. “Maybe she’s Merel,” Rey suggested. “Or Merel’s mother. She dresses like she’s from a desert.”

 

“Maybe,” Luke echoed thoughtfully.

 

A small, pale dome appeared on the horizon, shimmering in the full heat of the day. Rey sat up in her seat.

 

“Tell me if you see her again,” Luke said.

 

Rey nodded, and added a warning. “She’s never answered any of my questions about who she is.”

 

“Do you think she doesn’t want you to know?” Luke asked mildly.

 

“I’m not sure,” Rey said. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, watching out of the windscreen as the dome grew closer and closer. “She always liked it best when I taught myself things.”

 

“Hmm,” Luke said.

 

Rey said nothing.

 

“Here we are,” Luke said, bringing the speeder to a gentle stop. He added, with a sort of mordant self-consciousness: “Would you like your lunch before or after the tour?”

 

“Before,” Rey said, reaching for the cartons in the back of the speeder. She had been thinking longingly of food for some time.

 

“Not that one,” Luke said, taking the top container away from her. “That’s mine, you might find it a bit spicy. Yours will be milder.”  


If Rey’s was milder, she didn’t want to know what spicy tasted like. By the time she’d finished her food, her lips were stinging brightly and her mouth felt numb – though she conceded that the first few mouthfuls, before the spice had started to build up, had been very tasty. And the cooling sauce with green herbs that sort of contrasted with the creamy, deceptively sharp brown sauce the meatballs came in was very good.

 

“’S nice,” Rey croaked, and wheezed involuntarily.

 

Luke passed her a cold canister of something, which turned out to be a sweet-tasting yoghurt-ish drink that soothed Rey’s throat. “Better?”

 

“Yes,” Rey said, after a few grateful gulps. “Sorry.”

 

Luke shook his head. “Nothing to apologise for. You could have slowed down if it was a bit much, you know.”  


Rey shrugged awkwardly. She had never refused food until she came to the Resistance, when she discovered that there were actually people who ate when they were hungry, and didn’t stockpile food in advance of difficult times. It was still difficult for her to turn food down. Finn had taken to keeping snacks in a small locked cabinet in their room in order to reassure her, though Poe had put his foot down about some of the perishables in there.

 

“I suppose it comes of growing up on protein portions,” Luke remarked, sipping at some water. “Finn never seems to be able to manage anything remotely spicy, either.”  


“No,” Rey agreed. She capped the canister and tried some water instead; it made the remaining spice sharper in her throat, but she knew she needed the moisture. “Although I think the First Order’s stuff was a bit more… nutrient rich.”

 

“Probably,” Luke agreed.

 

Rey set her water bottle down. “I know you wanted me to see this,” she said. “But you don’t have to come with me, if it will hurt you.” She remembered what it had been like down in Maz Kanata’s secret cellars; remembered the pain of hearing her childhood self scream, and her panicked reaction. And that had been over events that Rey barely had any conscious memory of. Luke had lived here for the first two decades of his life, and his loss of this home had been easily as sudden and traumatic as her loss of her family.

 

“Rey,” Luke said gently. “I have seen much worse.”

 

Rey flushed awkwardly, and stared at her hands in her lap.

 

Luke laid a hand on her shoulder. “Kindness is not a weakness,” he told her. “I appreciate it.”

 

Rey nodded.


	10. Chapter 10

Outside the speeder and approaching the farmhouse, the twin suns beat down on Rey’s exposed head. She was grateful for the high neck of her shirt and its collar, shielding her neck, and smeared a little more sunbalm on her ears and the bridge of her nose. She had never had such a thing on Jakku, but in most places, she was learning, people did not wrap themselves in layer upon layer of fabric just to go out in the sun.

 

The farmhouse had plainly been seriously damaged at one point, and then repaired, but in such a way that it was easy to see where the original damage had been done. The old scorchmarks had been left on the single small building visible above ground, but the dome was in no danger of falling in, and the heavy metal blast door had been replaced: Rey could see a disconnect in style between the doorjamb and the door itself. There was an electric fence around something; when Rey approached it cautiously she saw that the electric fence surrounded a large, deep hole, and inside the deep hole shuttered windows and doors were plainly visible. Parts of the courtyard were whitewashed, but the paint was old and flaking. Sand had drifted into the hole, and coated the floor of the courtyard in a way that Rey suspected would make an inhabitant want to scream as sand got into everything they owned. 

 

Near the visible parts of the farmhouse stood several headstones, and two stone bowls like those in the Temple but much smaller, bolted into the bedrock. There was a tiny, mostly dried-up puddle of water in the bottom of one, and the other was half-full of sand. Luke was kneeling before them, and as Rey watched he poured water into one bowl, and sprinkled a handful of sand into the other. He bowed his head, and knelt in silence.

 

For the first time, Rey could not see the powerful Jedi in Luke; only the old man who had lost a great deal, and seen far too much. His Force presence had shrunk almost to nothing, to the point where it felt to her second sense as if there was a void where Luke knelt, but when she reached out she realised that void was harder than beskar iron, was a shield she couldn’t even think of reaching through. Rey bent her own head and waited, fingers twisting awkwardly together.

  
Eventually, Luke lifted his head and stood, and Rey walked over, slowly and carefully, telegraphing her movements as loudly as she could.

 

“My aunt and uncle are buried here,” Luke said to her, without looking around.

 

Rey counted six headstones. Four were makeshift, rough-hewn, hardly more than stones with names carved in Luke’s handwriting. Two looked as if they’d been made by professionals, meant to withstand time, and they did look less worn even though the dates on them were older. There were small tokens scattered all around the six graves and the two bowls, scraps of metal with writing on, little figurines, even the skeleton of a dried flower and a cheap plastic jewel half buried in sand. Rey crouched down and touched the jewel with a delicate finger; it was a deep pink, and childish-looking. She wondered if it had been a child’s or a young woman’s, and if the girl was still alive. Out of an instinctive respect for privacy she would never have succumbed to on Jakku, she did not read the prayers.

 

“There was another burial ground,” Luke continued, “further away, in the Jundland Plateau. We mostly call it the Wastes, but on the maps, it’s the Jundland Plateau. You could probably visit it safely now, the Sand People are so much warier of the farmers than they were, but when I was your age it wasn’t safe to go there. Hadn’t been for a long time. I suppose that’s why Uncle Owen buried his father and stepmother so much closer to the house.” He dusted his cloak off absently.

 

Rey was spelling out the names on the headstones. The two professionally made ones read _Shmi Skywalker_ _Lars_ and _Cliegg Lars_ ; Shmi had died first, Rey noticed, with a pang of sadness. She had been fifty, which would have been a very good age for a scavenger or a slave, but quite young for a farmer’s wife. Her headstone also read _free at the last_ , where Cliegg’s read _beloved husband and father_.

 

The roughly-hewn stones had only names, but Rey suspected their dates of death would live forever in the history books, whether they were accurately reported or not. _Beru Whitesun Lars. Owen Lars. Anakin Skywalker. Obi-Wan Kenobi._

 

“Did you bury Darth Vader here?” Rey asked, looking sideways at Luke. “I thought he died on the second Death Star.”

 

“He did,” Luke said. “I burned his body on the surface of Endor. This is just a headstone; I placed it when I came back.” He shrugged. “If it comes to that, Obi-Wan’s is only a headstone too. There was no body to bury at all, in that case. But he was of Tatooine, too… for a while. And he and my father were as close as brothers, when they were young men.” Luke brushed his fingers over both headstones, almost affectionately.

 

Rey blinked, and saw a young, fair-haired man dressed in black, gasping with effort as he dragged the heavy body of a tall man cloaked in metal towards a ship. She blinked again, and saw a different young man, taller, wearing dark robes rather than the slim-fitting shirt and trousers of his counterpart, and cradling an older woman in his arms. Tiny glints of gold flashed in his eyes.

 

Rey shook her head, and this time when she opened her eyes she saw Luke and the twin suns and the merciless blue skies of Tatooine again, which was a considerable relief.

 

Luke was watching her, head slightly tilted. “As I told you earlier,” he said. “The Force is strong here. The desert has not forgotten.”

 

Rey nodded.

 

 

Luke, of course, had a code for the blast door. It slid open easily; clearly, this place was reasonably well maintained, at least up to the front door.

 

“Technically it belongs to me,” Luke said, as they peered down into the darkness. “In the sense that I was Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s closest living heir. Aunt Beru’s family – the Whitesuns – might have claimed it, but they’re city people, they stay out of the backcountry.”

 

“I see you come here often,” Rey said, hand resting on the hilt of her lightsaber. She reached for the Force, and conjured a small light. It shone the same soft yellow as Poe’s little night crystal, which made sense, as she had never slept a night in that bunkroom without one of them lighting the crystal up. Even when Poe was away, she or Finn would automatically reach for it and tap the base.

 

Luke raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement of her remark, mouth twisting a little grimly. “I want you to see it,” he said. “Every Skywalker I know of – or knew of, before yesterday’s adventures in historical research – has set foot here. And there is a secondary concern; that Kylo Ren may have come here, looking for relics, or something to desecrate.”

  
Rey pointed out that there was still a blast door, and that if Kylo Ren had recently been here, that would not be the case. Also, if Kylo Ren had visited, they would probably have heard all about it from the locals – they were far from Mos Eisley, but Anchorhead and Tosche Station were closer, and Kylo Ren liked to spread his misery around.

 

“Ben was a highly physically capable young Jedi,” Luke said, his tone clinical as he tried to be when speaking of Kylo Ren. Rey thought that if he believed that hid his rage he was having a very extended and unpleasant joke on himself. “He also had a sense of the dramatic, which you will not be surprised to hear that he got from Han. It would have been exactly like him to simply jump straight down into the courtyard.”

 

“Finn said he had no self-control,” Rey said, taking one cautious step into the stairwell. Her light bobbed before her, small and friendly. It didn’t illuminate anything dangerous, and when Rey let her mind flow into the Force and outwards she felt nothing for miles around. “And a habit of slashing up the place with his lightsaber.”

 

When she glanced back up at him, Luke looked pained.

 

“Let me worry about Kylo Ren,” he said. “Just… Explore. Tell me what you think of this place.”

 

“Do I need to worry about the locals?” Rey enquired, testing each step carefully before she trod on it. There seemed to be very little metal in the construction of the homestead, at least that Rey had seen so far; doors and window shutters were metal, but everything else appeared to be solid rock or brick, and it had survived a battering from stormtroopers and years of comparative neglect. She was really more worried about the fauna; nothing on Jakku was exactly friendly, but they had nothing much like womp rats, either. Teda Massey and his family had told her more about womp rats than she had ever wanted to know.

 

“No,” Luke said. “Womp rats don’t nest anywhere like this. There might be the odd gundark, but gundarks are generally more afraid of you than you are of them.”

 

“Unlike everything else on Tatooine,” Rey said, reaching the bottom of the stairs. Luke’s own light was floating softly in the darkness above her: it was very pale, almost white, and reminded Rey of the white gowns General Organa always seemed to be wearing in old holos. The Last Princess of Alderaan, glowing with purpose.  


How Kylo Ren thought he was going to turn the General to the Dark after everything she'd suffered without falling, Rey couldn't imagine.

 

“Ha,” Luke said. His voice echoed oddly in the stairwell. “Concentrate on the Force, young padawan, and mind your step.”

 

Rey smiled, and moved forwards, into the homestead.

 

 

It was quiet; eerily so. It did not sound like an abandoned building; it was nothing like the ruined star destroyers Rey had scrambled and abseiled through from childhood, creaking as their old metal bones settled into the sand of Jakku, hissing and whistling as the wind ran through them. This place felt like it had only been left for a few hours, locked up while the inhabitants went visiting, and lay ready for their return. Only of course it was not; Owen and Beru had died here more than thirty years ago, and Luke had left that very day.

 

It didn’t feel like an angry place. Rey wandered around the homestead as Luke walked around it, punching in the codes to open doors which had been closed for years. Most of them, unlike the front door, creaked heavily, and one stuck. Rey thought they could have left a droid here to do the maintenance work, but Luke would never have agreed to it. The droid would probably have been near-defenceless, should the Sand People come, and it would have been alone for a very long time.

 

Luke prodded the stuck door, and then went into the garage in search of a spray bottle of oil and set himself to maintaining all the doors. Rey hid a smile. She never got tired of seeing Luke roll up his sleeves and start in on some minor engineering task over the faint protests of mechanics and ground crew. He always ended up with smudges of grease on his nose and a lightness about him that Rey never saw anywhere else.

 

Rey put Luke out of her mind, and focussed on the homestead. She still felt strange here – strange like she could turn and see the dream woman, not blue as she had been to Rey’s waking eyes, but the colours of the sand and the suns and the plateau in the distance, the way she was in Rey’s dreams.  Strangely at home, and yet strangely unnerved. This place felt both – both very steady, and very temporary.

 

Standing in the abandoned kitchen, something clicked in Rey’s mind and her eyes flew wide open. She was picking up on the feelings of several people; several people had lived here, or stayed here, or passed through, leaving deep marks on the tides of the Force lapping around a Skywalker home, and Rey was confusing them.

 

She shut her eyes again and tried to pick apart the strands, like mending and reattaching Threepio’s proper arm, like rewiring consoles for Kaydel Ko Connix, who couldn’t handle a soldering iron without burning off her fingerprints. The temporary imprints, those were the easiest to separate: fine like gauze, and temperamental, threatening to drift into the dust of half-remembered days under Rey’s hands. Someone angry, _very_ angry, angry because they were frightened, because they were not heard, and because they were afraid of themselves. Someone scared, someone soothing: the same person. And something about both of those people wound into a third, deeper imprint, one that Rey recognised but couldn’t place: someone who wanted out, someone who had had enough, who yearned for the horizon, for faster, for further, for glory.

 

Rey walked into a table when she realised that the reason the third imprint was familiar was because it was redolent of a younger, brighter, less tarnished Luke.

 

“ _Ow_ ,” she yelped, and opened her eyes. When she did, the room was full of sunlight, and the table was clean; a woman with fair, shoulder-length hair and a blue denim jacket was tying some bundles of herbs for drying, and packing others into bags for freezing. She looked up and straight through Rey and laughed: _Aunt Beru, Aunt Beru, Biggs_ – cried a young and familiar voice, and Rey turned and the shadows shifted. A steady-looking man in his mid-twenties with a blunt nose, blunt face, and blunt-cut brown hair cleaned his hands in the sink; they were bloody, his tunic was bloody, and his face was grim. Behind him a lovely woman of a similar age sat; fine-boned, with curly dark hair, wearing a rich blue dress with wide, impractical sleeves, her slender hands curled around a stoneware mug. She looked at the man like she was worried, and neither of them said anything, and Rey felt awkward so she looked away.

 

The shadows changed again and Luke with gold in his hair and carefree eyes was running down the stairs, chased by a taller, darker young man, and the blunt man Rey had seen before was yelling that the boys should keep it down, and Rey looked Luke dead in the eyes and he saw her and stopped so suddenly that he and his follower went down in a tangle of limbs. Rey took a step back, she blinked, she shook her head, she looked out into the courtyard where she knew Luke was in this day and age, the shadows twisted around her once more –

 

It was dark now, dark as Rey knew it was not, not really: grey pre-dawn light. It played over the shoulders and back of a woman of medium height, her greying dark hair in a typical Tatooine bun, her dress, her over-tunic…

 

Rey could not be sure in this uncertain light. The woman she saw could be any woman; she was too far away, on the far side of the courtyard and partly shaded by a large plant that wasn’t there in the present day, and her back was turned to Rey. Rey took two steps forward, reaching out, and promptly fell straight over the kitchn door’s slightly raised lintel, catching herself and rolling hastily to her feet. She blinked hard, but the suns’ light was as it had been when she and Luke entered the deserted homestead, and the only person she could see or sense – even with her mind wide open and ranging as far as the badlands she now knew were ten and a half miles to the east, making her distinctly dislocated – was Luke himself. He was sitting comfortably up against a wall, a nearby door’s moving parts and an entire box of tools scattered around him.

 

“I suppose you’ll tell me you meant to do that,” Luke observed.

 

Rey laughed a little awkwardly. “No, I… No.” She patted the doorjamb. “There’s a lot here.” Still with her mind wide open to the Force, she was almost drowning in the deeper imprints left here, Luke himself blazing a twenty-year beacon in the Force, and someone else – someone quieter and more self-contained. Philosophical – Rey thought that was the word. But that was an imprint long gone, buried by more recent or brighter imprints.

 

“Are you feeling overwhelmed?” Luke asked.

 

“A bit,” Rey admitted, and sat herself down in the shade to drink some water. She stretched her legs out before her, and focussed on her boots, every wrinkle and divot and stain in the leather, until the Force stopped yanking at her brain the way the undertow had yanked at her feet the first time she set foot in the sea on Ahch-To.

 

A few minutes later, she was feeling steady enough to get back to her feet and investigate the rest of the homestead. Tuned in to the way the Force moved around this place – to the way it moved around the Skywalkers who had left their marks here – she now felt flashes of lives without feeling consumed by them, and without feeling in danger of confusing them for the living world. She saw what she guessed to be Obi-Wan Kenobi placing Luke in Beru Whitesun Lars’s arms, and the small woman in the blue dress holding the hands of a man in dark robes kneeling before her. She saw Luke working on droids she recognised as Artoo and Threepio – saw a tiny flash of Artoo playing a holo image too small and too far away for Rey to recognise – and then, as she wandered up to where Luke was, recoiled several steps.

 

“I’m not making that much of a mess,” Luke said mildly, wiping his fingers on a filthy rag. Now that Rey was seeing the living world again, she could pick out the various parts of the stuck door, disassembled and scattered around Luke, mingled with tools and a spray bottle of metal oil.

 

Rey knew she was brick red. That had been – had been a very strong impression, and she thought she understood now why General Organa had taken her aside for a brief and instructive talk on the importance of practising your shielding before getting into a sexual relationship with anyone, because otherwise everyone Force-sensitive for miles around would know. At the time, Rey had assumed that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as General Organa had said; after all, no-one had ever shown any signs of awareness of Rey quietly and efficiently reaching orgasm once or twice a week when she could guarantee no interruptions.

 

Maybe there was something different about partners. Or maybe she was doing something wrong.

 

Luke laid down the rag and squinted up at her. “Rey?”  


“His name was Biggs, right?” Rey blurted.

 

Luke’s face did not change, but Rey felt a well-hidden stab of mortification strike him. “Yes.”

 

“I… Um,” Rey said.

 

“Bear this in mind when you eventually climb into bed with Finn,” Luke advised. “For purposes other than sleeping, I mean.”  


Rey’s cheeks and neck felt so hot she thought she might have sunburned them. “Um. Excuse me,” she said, and fled to the cool safety of the garage, where she applied sunbalm again and poked around the droid parts and vaporator pieces until she felt better. She stayed there, mentally pricing the tools, until Luke eventually closed up most of the doors and came to fetch her, on the grounds that there was one other place he wanted to take her to.

 

“Where?” Rey said, having a certain amount of difficulty looking Luke in the eye. All she had seen was a much younger Luke shoving a laughing dark-haired man against the door and kissing him with more passion than Rey could ever have imagined Luke showing, the other man’s hand curling affectionately into Luke’s hair. She had seen far more on Jakku. But there’d been so much want and life and brightness in that moment, that single second of a kiss, that Rey had been knocked off her feet.

 

She had a queasy feeling that Biggs Darklighter had died less than a year after that kiss. She kept wondering if the loss Luke had felt was like the loss she might feel, if Finn were to die in battle, if Poe were to be shot down and vaporised.

 

“Obi-Wan Kenobi’s hermitage,” Luke said, and sighed. “I’m very sorry you witnessed that particular element of my former life, Rey; had I realised that was a possibility, I would never –”

 

“It was an accident,” Rey said hastily, “you don’t have to be sorry, honestly – I’ve seen much worse.”  
  
Luke’s face screwed up like he’d just bitten into a piece of sour fruit. “That’s not a good thing, Rey.”  
  
Rey got to her feet, setting aside the parts she’d been tinkering with. “It is what it is,” she said, and shrugged.

 

“One day,” Luke said, propping his hands on his hips just like General Organa, “I am going to have a very stern word with whichever moofmilker left you on Jakku.”

 

“I know,” Rey said, and touched Luke on the shoulder gently as she passed by. He almost smiled, lips pressing together.

 

Maybe she’d have had a better life if her parents had brought her to the Jedi Order, rather than leaving her with Unkar Plutt, or maybe she would just have died, like all the others. You couldn’t know.

 

 _No-one is ever allowed to know what might have been_ , Rey thought, climbing the stairs to the top of the damaged little domed tower. It was one of the desert woman’s favourite lessons.

 

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s hermitage was nearly an hour away in the speeder; it might have been closer had Luke not got lost on the way there, and had to turn around in a narrow blind canyon, cursing like the pilot he had once been. Rey saw Luke squint up at the sky and then around into the canyons of the Jundland Wastes, his eyes assessing and somehow merciless.

 

“Credit for them,” Rey said, touching the hilt of her lightsaber and letting her own Force awareness seep out into the stone alleys. She couldn’t feel anything or anyone besides the odd small lizard. Teda Massey had told her bloodthirsty tales about the Sand People, too, enough to make her grateful that she hadn’t had to huddle close to Niima Outpost for fear of anyone like that on Jakku; but Teda had also said that they didn’t come close to Anchorhead Valley any more. He could have been wrong: he could have been trying to reassure her without having any true knowledge. Rey wasn’t sure which would be worse.

 

“Nothing,” Luke said, bringing the speeder out of its hovering holding pattern and twisting into a sharp turn Rey would have hesitated to attempt. “I just wondered. I flew out here to find Obi-Wan – it’s a long story; read your history books, they’ll get at least half of it right – and was nearly killed by the Sand People.”

 

Rey thought of the Galactic Civil War without Luke Skywalker, and her mouth twisted. Supposing she’d even been born, she would probably have known very little difference, living out her life on Jakku. But it would have been a colder galaxy without the Rebellion and the Second Republic, she thought, regardless of the First Order’s rise.

 

It was cool in the deep shadows they flew through, Tatooine’s suns slowly beginning to sink in the sky, the canyons twisted by long-dead rivers flinging sharp dark cloaks over the ground. The inside of the speeder was climate-controlled, but Rey instinctively tugged at her loose jacket.

 

“We shouldn’t stay too long,” Luke said, as a small, nondescript house perched high on the side of a cliff came into view. “I’m confident that you and I could manage any number of Sand People between us, but I see no reason to pick an unnecessary fight.”

 

Rey looked sideways at him, and thought that Luke’s entire life had been about picking fights he considered necessary. “All right,” she said.

 

In the end, it wasn’t a difficult instruction to follow. She got out of the speeder and climbed the steps to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s home – far smaller and more basic than the Lars farmstead, it reminded her strongly of Luke’s hermitage on Ahch-To and was far more poorly maintained than either the farmstead or the Ahch-To hermitage had been – but she barely crossed the threshold before a wave of very familiar loneliness and grief hit her.

 

“No,” she blurted, “no, no, I’m not going back there, no,” and scrambled out of the house.

 

“Rey!” Luke caught her by one arm before she could walk backwards off the landing. “Rey. Easy, easy. No-one is taking you anywhere.”

 

“It’s just like Jakku,” Rey said, and realised belatedly that tears were streaming down her face. She scrubbed them away with the cuffs of her shirt, which came away damp with tears and smeared with sunbalm. “It’s just like – He thought he would never go home, he’d lost all his family, he didn’t know where to turn, he only had this one thing to cling to. It’s just like –”

 

She broke off, and took several deep breaths. She sat down on the edge of the landing, feet dangling over empty space, put her hands on her knees and pressed down as she breathed in, the way Poe sometimes did when he was riding out a panic attack. Her shoulders and chest lifted with her breath, and slowly she calmed herself.

 

Luke sat down next to her. “I am sorry, Rey.” He sighed. “I should not have brought you here until your shields were stronger.”

 

“No,” Rey said. She wiped her nose on her wrist; General Organa would huff and wave a handkerchief at her if she were here. “I have to get better somehow.”  


Luke clicked his tongue. “Not like this. You are deeply touched by your visions, aren’t you? You have trouble understanding the fragility of them, sometimes?”

 

Rey hesitated, turning this over carefully in her mind, and then nodded.

 

“Be wary of that,” Luke said. He sounded so tired, Rey thought, so tired. “The Sith Lord Palpatine used my father’s inability to understand that visions are no reliable guide to the waking world against him: that was how he fell to the Dark Side. My father saw the future, and you do not, but the principle is the same”

 

“I won’t fall,” Rey promised. “I’m not going anywhere. You need me.”

 

Luke smiled with real affection. “I know,” he said, and when he patted her shoulder gently with his metal hand Rey thought again that it wouldn’t be a bad thing, to be a Skywalker.

 

“I should go in,” Rey said, looking back at the door. “I can do it.”

 

“Raise your shields,” Luke said, instead of telling her she didn’t need to prove anything. “And leave, if you become overwhelmed. I’ll be here.”

 

Rey nodded, and climbed to her feet, approaching the door. She paused outside and took a moment to breathe; drew around herself the contours of an X-wing, nimble and strong, cradling her against the darkness of space, and made those contours her shield. Then she thought of the desert woman saying _there is a family for you; I know there is_ , and thought of how she had never truly been alone, not really. Kylo Ren had said otherwise, but Kylo Ren was – thankfully - not in full possession of the facts.

 

Rey stepped into the small, dusty, half-broken mud-brick rooms in which Obi-Wan Kenobi had lived out half of his adult life. They had been ransacked long before, and Rey had a scavenger’s doubts about the structural integrity of the building, but they were still there, and so was the imprint of Kenobi’s grief, his loneliness.

 

Instead of reflexive terror, Rey found, she felt nothing but compassion. She trailed her fingers across a wall and looked around, committing every detail to memory.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly to the shafts of light pouring in through broken shutters. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”  


When she stepped out of the building, Luke was talking to the empty air above the canyon.

 

“Kindness and impulsivity will take you a very long way,” he was saying, “provided your heart never loses sight of your mind.”

 

“What?” Rey said.

 

Luke turned his head and smiled at her very innocently.

 

“Nothing,” he said.

 

 

Their return to Mos Espa was extremely quiet. They stopped briefly at the Lars farm: Luke, who had graciously allowed Rey to pilot the speeder for the return journey, climbed out of the speeder and went to stand by the six headstones again. Rey waited, and did not watch. It seemed cruel.

 

They passed through Tosche Station instead of Mos Eisley on the way back; nobody here tried to steal the speeder, although someone did engage Rey in conversation about their excellent hunting skills that Luke later had to explain to Rey was flirtation. It made sense, Rey supposed. She’d never known anyone near her own age to pair off permanently near Niima Outpost, but there had been a few married couples, down on their luck and out of other chances – and to support someone else you’d _need_ to be a superb provider. It was just that Rey was used to people promising her their support in battle and their care if she was sick, not food. Maybe things would have been different on Jakku, but the question had not arisen there.

 

Luke sighed and put the hot, milky spiced tea he had bought for both of them in the cup-holder near to Rey’s elbow. “I hope not all of Jakku was so desolate.”  


“I never saw anything that wasn’t,” Rey said. “Han said it was just a junkyard.”  


“Han said a lot of things about Tatooine, too.”

 

The twin suns fell slowly in the sky, turning the air to purple and orange. Rey’s admirer had expressed concern for her and Luke, out alone in a speeder after dark – it would be dark before they reached Mos Espa – but Rey wasn’t afraid. She knew the way she knew her own two hands that Luke would never allow her to come to harm.

 

In Mos Espa, they moored the speeder behind the hostel they were staying in, and walked into the centre to buy dinner. Further out, Rey knew, the streets would be dark and quiet; but Mos Espa was well-defended, and, as Luke explained, hadn’t seen a Sand People attack for decades. These paths and alleys were hung with lanterns, and people were sitting over meals in groups, chatting and laughing. Luke chose somewhere for them to eat, and they sat at the edge of Liberation Square on a wide wooden bench, watching the municipal streetlamps cast their solar-powered glow over an extremely inaccurate portrait of General Organa.

 

Rey looked sideways as their food arrived – very promptly, and accompanied by a stare at Luke that she could only describe as awed - and saw that Luke was smiling faintly. 

 

“What is it?” she said, face scrunching into an instinctive, answering smile.

 

“It’s just nice to see places that have changed for the better,” Luke replied. “And stayed that way.” His smile turned contemplative. “Not that… well. Change is a process that has no end.”

 

Rey tried thinking about this while she applied herself to her noodles. They had been very lightly spiced, although from the waiter’s wince she thought it had harrowed Tatooine sensibilities to cook them so blandly. As a consequence, Rey could eat them without sneezing or gasping for breath, and had space in her brain to think about what Luke had just said.

 

“It makes you sad,” she said finally. “That so many things have changed for the worse as well as the better.”  


“Weary,” Luke corrected, but he nodded as well. “It was something that Leia and Han and I learnt… after the fact. Nothing stands still in this galaxy. The future is never guaranteed, and it is possible to lose gains you have made. Victory is never final.”

 

Rey slurped a noodle and flicked sauce all over the table. “Oops.”  


Luke’s mouth twitched. “A Jedi doesn’t slurp.”

 

Rey rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve seen your table manners.” General Organa ate with the elegant precision drilled into her by having a queen for a mother, even when she was scoffing field rations while standing up in the middle of her situation room. Luke, when he remembered to eat on a normal human schedule, tended to have his mind on something else, and was therefore often accidentally messy.

 

“My Aunt Beru would smother me in my sleep if she had seen the way I ate with Rogue Squadron,” Luke agreed, and spiked a piece of braised lizard with his fork.

 

Rey had her own room in their lodgings, with a window that had a deep cushioned ledge she could sit on. She kept the lamp lit and sat up thinking, though not for very long: she was still tired. She recorded and sent a holo to Poe and Finn, something short and rambling and not particularly meaningful, just so that she could have communicated with them. She couldn’t risk telling them about anything important, Merel Skywalker or the Lars farm or Luke’s negotiations or the Masseys and Darklighters – anything that might turn anyone into a target if the communication was somehow intercepted – and she didn’t feel comfortable talking to them about the veiled warning Luke had given her over dinner. Rey hated that she had to pick and choose her words when she was talking to them, but she had no other option. So she talked on about Tatooine’s twin sunsets and desert planets and some of the curious droid designs she’d seen around, and hoped that Poe and Finn would send her a similar snapshot back: a piece of life with the people she missed. Finn had always sent her tiny dispatches, little notes coloured by his years of perfect reports for the First Order; Poe had started writing back to her too rather than just wishing her good luck through Finn, tentative sentences that were slowly easing into whole paragraphs, and sometimes even mentioned his feelings, which he seemed to think were a burden Rey and Finn shouldn't have to carry.  


Rey could hope to receive some kind of a response from at least one of them soon, but not soon enough.

 

In her head, she made a list of everything important that had happened that she really wanted to tell them, and kept it close.


	11. Chapter 11

_When Rey is sixteen there is a thunderstorm - the first for years. Rey cannot scavenge in the beating rain, with the lightning flashing death down onto the incautious. She locks herself into her AT-AT, ekes out her meagre portions and wraps herself in blankets, waiting for the storm to end. The rain is very loud where it strikes the roof of her little home: Rey feels surrounded and afraid. She clutches her doll to her as if she were a child again._

_Eventually, she sleeps, and opens her eyes to the desert woman's smiling face._

_It's been a long time, my blood, Rey says coolly, determined not to show how much she has missed her only guide._

_The desert woman's smile softens. I know, she answers, and brushes a strand of Rey's hair gently off her face._

_Rey says nothing._

_They sit in silence for a while. Rey does not know this place, rocky and hostile, but carpeted with soft yellow and pink mosses. Tilting her head up she sees four moons in the slowly dimming sky._

_I miss you, she says finally._

_I love you, the desert woman replies._

_If I'd had a family, Rey said -_

_You do, the desert woman interrupted._

_\- A real one, that didn't abandon me, Rey corrected. Would I still know you? Would you still have come to me, to help?_

_No-one is ever allowed to know what might have been, the desert woman says. It's not an answer, and Rey says so aloud._

_There are some questions that nobody can answer, the desert woman replies. There is no certainty then. Only the truth._

_No-one is ever allowed to know what might have been, Rey repeats thoughtfully, and leans her head against the desert woman's shoulder. They are the same height now. What did you come to teach me, my blood?_

_The desert woman's arm curves around her shoulders. Just that, my loved one._

_Oh, Rey sighs. She drifts off again._

_When she wakes, the rain has stopped, and everything smells fresh._

 

 

***

 

The next morning they both woke and breakfasted early, the only people in the hostel's central room so near dawn, and Luke wrapped his best robes around himself, issued a persecuted sigh on the theme of politics, and sallied forth to the Councils and the Law Speaker. Rey, who had to wait until the archives opened to carry out her errand for the day, went out into Mos Espa and went exploring.

 

She had a map, and in any case, her sense of direction was good. She dropped by the spaceport to say hello to Chewbacca, who had declined to join them at dinner yesterday because he'd made arrangements to meet up with some old friends, and was sent away with a Yavinese wasp in her ear by a sullen Wookiee with a rotten hangover. She fled, giggling, and settled down to wander the city. Luke had told her that it had been extensively remodelled after the revolt against Jabba; guerrilla warfare hadn't done the architecture any favours, and a significant chunk of the city had originally been designed cheaply, with few serious standards for anything but ease of subjugation. Roofs had occasionally fallen in, which was obviously undesirable.

 

Rey browsed the shops as they opened, and bought a cup of something cool and refreshing to drink as the suns rose in the sky. With her hair braided up, and her padawan braid pinned and hidden in the larger braid, she looked like any other tourist - though possibly not one from Tatooine. Everyone here seemed to be wearing some sort of poncho; Rey had never considered ponchos as anything other than wet-weather gear, but none of these looked waterproof.

 

She admired a display of succulent plants in colourfully painted pots, considered buying one for the _Falcon_ and then remembered that if she did she'd have to carry it around Mos Espa all day, and wandered on. A left turn brought her into some smaller, narrower streets, where single-storey apartments were piled up two or three deep, and the whitewashing and smartly painted doors looked like they didn't fit with the style of the buildings, like they were newer and fresher. Rey kept walking, noting the small signs of affluence not congruent with tiny aspects of the houses' design, and then realised - after finding a metal sign and holo tucked into an alcove that lauded the achievements of Kitster Banai, born a slave in this very house and died a free man and a legislator - that she was in the slave quarters of Mos Espa, where Anakin Skywalker had taken his first steps.

 

Curious, and feeling strangely guilty for her curiosity, she kept walking until she came to a sudden stop for no reason she could understand, by a particularly small apartment tucked in the lee of a solid staircase. There was no plaque here, probably because Anakin Skywalker's childhood home wasn't known from any records, but Rey could feel the same blazing signature here that she had in the Lars homestead. And something else, too, underlying it, something Rey fought to identify -

 

A group of schoolchildren of several different species came chattering down the road, and Rey automatically stepped out of their way, her concentration breaking. One, a little boy who looked to be maybe six or seven, looked up at her with curious eyes that flashed dark for a second, just like Elly’s had; but his older brother tugged him along and he turned away.

 

Rey looked after them. They looked so small, she thought, so small and so normal, on their way to school. Rey had never been to school, and it was plain from the occasionally horrified reactions of members of the Resistance that Finn's education had been abnormal, but Poe talked about attending school on Yavin IV sometimes. It sounded so kind. Somewhere you went just to learn things, things that would help you when you got older, with other children. And it wasn't your burden, the onus wasn't on you; there were other people to teach you and help you if you didn't understand. Snap made it sound like it had been a chore, but honestly, Rey couldn't imagine anything better.

 

Would these children ever get to go to school again, if the First Order came to Tatooine?

 

"May the Force be with you _all_ ," she said under her breath, and that blazing signature - and the quieter underlay, so hard to detect - flashed in her mind again.

 

Rey stared at Anakin Skywalker’s childhood home. “Look after them,” she said, without knowing why she did. “Someone should.”

 

Anakin Skywalker was dead, of course, and the chances that his ghost could hear her were nonexistent: this was just an echo, an impression, a footprint. Rey checked her chronometer and left for the archives, detouring by the shop with the plants. Finn liked plants, and the date he'd chosen for his birthday was coming up, anyway.

 

There were definite positives to being instantly recognisable as Luke Skywalker's padawan, Rey thought, as she made her way through Liberation Square to the archives and found her way back to the terminal she'd used the day before yesterday. When you turned up at a government building with a potted plant in a cheerfully painted tub under one arm, they simply took it as the fact of Jedi life it wasn't. Rey perched her plant on top of the terminal, settled her belt and blaster more comfortably, and went searching for Merel Skywalker's paper trail.

 

Unfortunately, searching for a free woman - a free woman whose career necessarily made her very mobile - was quite different to searching for a slave, who had been heavily documented in order to control her. Rey tried residency records in Mos Espa, and then in Mos Eisley on the basis of Luke's suspicions about how Merel had earned the credits for her freedom, and then expanded her search to half the continent, and found nothing. By the time the duty archivist came in to check on her, around the lunch hour, Rey was cross and frustrated.

 

"What a lovely plant," the archivist said mildly, and arched one eyebrow at Rey. He had the same trick of looking mild and totally disbelieving as Luke did; maybe it was a Tatooine thing. "Jedi business, no doubt."

 

"Uh," Rey said, lifting her head hurriedly from where she'd just banged it against the desk. "Yes." Well, it was her business, and she was a Jedi.

 

"I take it your research is not proceeding as desired," the archivist said.

 

Rey looked at the screen, which was showing 0 results for Merel Skywalker. "You could say that."

 

"Let me know if there's anything I can do to help." The archivist looked from the screen to Rey and back again. "Can I suggest a break?"

 

"That would - yes, I think that would be a good idea." Rey smiled distractedly at him, knowing her padawan braid was on the verge of coming out, her hair was a bird's nest from having run her hands through it repeatedly, and she was generally in a state. The archivist smiled at her understandingly and left, and Rey secured her braid, yanked her hair back with a tie, logged herself out of the terminal and got up to go.

 

Halfway down the corridor, she turned back and returned for the plant.

 

Rey went back out into the square for lunch and bought something she was promised was mild; they must be more used to off-worlders here, because it actually was. She sat in a shaded corner with Finn's plant, out of the scorching sun, and people-watched for a bit. Briefly, she glimpsed Luke - in the centre of a knot of politicians and deep in conversation, his Force sense tangled and inward-turned as he wrangled with some problem, his best robes swirling as he strode across the square with them - but only from a distance.

 

Rey sat back and thought about her work. She had got nowhere looking at residency, but it was possible Merel had unofficially sub-let somewhere and it wasn't in the record. She hadn't found anything in criminal records, either, and there was no death certificate. It was more than possible that someone resourceful or troublesome enough to pay their way out of slavery by mapping routes for smugglers - if that was what Merel had actually done - had got herself into some kind of trouble that meant she'd been quietly disposed of.

 

But it was just as likely, Rey thought, that Merel Skywalker had decided to shake Tatooine's desert sand from her feet. How would she have made money in Mos Espa as a navigator, if people with other slaves like her had the market sewn up? And Owen Lars, whatever he'd been right or wrong about, had described one of Luke's relatives as a navigator on a spice freighter...

 

Rey stirred the greens in the bottom of her soup bowl with a spoon. She thought there might be crew manifests in the archives. Luke had said that Jabba the Hutt liked to know what he was owed, and this had been his capital... he probably had all the berths for anything space-capable sewn up.

 

By now, Rey had an idea of the scope of Jabba's business dealings. She winced at the thought of the freighters he must have had an interest in, and the size of the crews they might have had. Han could run a smuggling freighter with a two-person crew, but the Falcon was not a large ship; her value as a freighter had laid in Han's speed, his skill as a pilot, and his recklessness. The maximum crew the Falcon could take was six, and that would be hugely crowded. Most smuggling freighters were much larger and had commensurately bigger crews. And Rey would never know, if Merel wasn't in the records, whether she had died or whether she had simply sneaked aboard a ship not on the records, or changed her name and carried on. Or maybe the records wouldn't be complete. Rey still wouldn't have any way of knowing.

 

Rey glared at the roughly glazed base of the bowl, slowly being revealed as she ate her way through the greens, and wished she could talk to Finn or Poe about this. Or even Luke, right now, because Luke knew what it was like to have unanswered questions about family, and in some ways he was taking it very personally that another Skywalker had grown up with their face turned to the sky, waiting for a half-remembered figure to come home. That was why she was here, after all, instead of trailing Luke around for his discussions with the Councils and the Law Speaker.  That was why Luke had made it important, if not exactly a priority, to find her family.

 

Rey thought about the hundreds and thousands of datatapes lined up on the shelves in the archives. What if Merel Skywalker wasn't in any of them? She'd be back to square - well, maybe not square one, but square two and a half or so. And even if she was there, ships' crews often changed. Rey would have to trail one woman through maybe as much as twenty years of records, assuming there were records that hadn't been destroyed, assuming Merel Skywalker's ships had stayed on the right side of the law. And then - because Merel Skywalker was too old to be Rey's mother - she'd have to keep going down the generations, and there was a whole galaxy to search...

 

Rey put her bowl aside. The task felt not merely daunting but impossible. She shut her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall, fingers of one hand hooked over the edge of the plant's pot rim, the other curled around her bowl.

 

She couldn't not try, she told herself. She couldn't wait for fifteen years and just... give up, just because it was hard. The endless marks on the walls of her AT-AT stretched across her mind's eye, every one of them a reason not to give in to never knowing.

 

Rey opened her eyes and pulled the plant onto her lap. "Right," she said to its thick, shiny green leaves. "Ship manifests."

 

"I didn't realise Jedi talked to potted plants," the waitress remarked, scooping up Rey's abandoned bowl.

 

"Uh," Rey said, blushing ferociously.

 

The girl gave her a sly smile. "Caught the sun, off-worlder? Better stick around and cool down."

 

"Um," Rey said, getting up and carrying the plant with her. "I'm all right, thanks. The Force works in mysterious ways."

 

"So what's the plant for?"

 

Something about the tone of enquiry was familiar to Rey. _Do you have a boyfriend?_ she remembered. _A cute boyfriend?_ "My boyfriend," she improvised, and made her escape.

 

 

Rey's concentration broke when she heard Luke coming down the corridor with ears that owed more to the Force than to her body. He sounded tired and uneasy; Rey pushed herself away from the terminal and looked around just as he came in.

 

"Is it going well?" he asked, ambling over and delicately touching the edge of the plant's leaves with blunt, calloused fingers. "I like the vegetation, by the way."

 

"It's for Finn," Rey explained.

 

Luke hummed ambiguously.

 

"I found the ship," Rey said. "Two weeks after she bought her freedom she left Tatooine on the _Clarity,_ heading for Corellia." Rey leaned back in her chair and stretched. "The _Clarity_ comes back once or twice, and she's still a crew member. The last time she appears she's off to Chandrila."

 

"Chandrila's Resistance-affiliated," Luke said encouragingly. "We have a reasonably good chance of finding her. Any family on board ship?"

 

"No," Rey said, "and _Clarity'_ s registered to a planet I've never heard of in the Ileenium system." She sighed. "It's... there's quite a lot of space to look in."

 

Luke patted her shoulder. "We'll find them."

 

"But maybe not for years," Rey said. "And the war is more important."

 

Luke sat down and said nothing.

 

"I can't abandon my friends," Rey said. "And - and if the First Order wins, if - like you said -" _Kylo Ren tries to find my family to warp them or kill them_ , she thought in Luke's general direction, even though she was fairly sure the duty archivist had left for the day and no-one else was around, and knew he'd heard her by his tiny nod - "if I don't help fight, it'll be that much easier for them to be. You know. Caught."

 

"I know," Luke said, very gently. "I know."

 

Rey picked at the terminal's plastic, and then took down the potted plant from where it sat on top of the casing and examined it.

 

"You've started a new rumour about the Jedi," Luke said conversationally. "Apparently we draw our strength from pot plants."

 

Rey stared at him.

 

"Theologically speaking it's not _wrong_ ," Luke elaborated. "I mean, when you consider the Living Force -"

 

Rey considered the Living Force on a regular basis, usually when she'd found a form of noxious alien life in her quarters and wanted to get it out without killing it or alarming anyone, and she rolled her eyes at him.

 

Luke grinned. "When last I checked you didn't need a pot plant to channel the Living Force. What's it really for?"

 

"Finn's birthday," Rey said. "It's in a week, if I've calculated right. He likes... the First Order didn't do individuality, so he likes things that are for him, to make places... his. And things." Hence the jacket, Rey thought. Finn was very difficult to separate from that jacket, unless he happened to drape it over Poe or Rey. "Neither of us is very good with plants, but I got instructions, and Poe's all right at that kind of thing."

 

"His mother was very good at gardening," Luke said. He was watching Rey with something hidden behind his eyes, but when she looked quizzically at him he smiled and let it go.

 

"How was your day?" Rey said.

 

Luke wrinkled his nose, but when he said "Productive," his voice was clear, even and cheerful.

 

Rey somehow got the impression he wasn't going to say any more.

 

"The archives are about to shut," she said. She gathered up her datapad and pulled her loose jacket back on.

 

"So they are." Luke got to his feet. "Dinner?"

 

Rey nodded. She logged herself out of the terminal and carried the datatapes back to where she'd found them. For some reason, it felt like closing a door; like giving up, for the moment.

 

Rey gritted her teeth. Olimar, she thought. Olimar, in the Ileenium system. I have a lead. I have somewhere to look.

 

"Rey?"

 

"I just wish I had more _time_ ," Rey said.

 

Luke's lips folded like he knew what she meant.

 

Rey turned the lights off when she left the archives.

 

***

_Rey sees the desert woman less and less as she gets older. Sometimes now she is only a few silent moments in an otherwise unrelated dream; an encouraging smile, a gentle hand on Rey’s shoulder, a slight jerk of the chin indicating something Rey should pay attention to. Rey thinks she is supposed to be learning to teach herself. She is old enough, after all. The other scavengers no longer call her a child, and the smaller, meaner ones are learning to fear her staff and the flash of a knife that may follow; Unkar Plutt is even less kind than he has been, now that Rey is not beneath his eye, a less tempting potential commodity._

_Sometimes Rey sees the desert woman, and thinks the desert woman does not see her in return. Kneeling by a little fair-haired boy, tying a high metal crown onto her head and giving her hands to a sturdy older man with a warm smile, picking among a pile of droid parts with sure fingers, wearing a tangle of wire and lights in her hair on a dark night, dancing around a bonfire in the twilight. Sometimes she is old, sometimes she is young; her eyes never change._

_Rey calls out to her – my blood, my blood – and the desert woman never answers, though sometimes she looks a little puzzled._

_Rey asks the desert woman about these times, the few nights when the desert woman comes to her as she did when Rey was a little girl._

_I don’t know, my loved one, the desert woman says. I don’t remember seeing you there. She tucks a piece of Rey’s hair behind her ear. That doesn’t mean you weren’t there._

_Rey smiles, uneasy, close-lipped._

_What shall I teach you, my loved one? the desert woman says, and she smiles._

 

***

 

 

When Rey got home, with her datapad full of information from Tatooine and a lot to meditate on, Finn and Poe were away - some scouting mission, nobody could tell Rey more, but they were due to be home soon.

 

Rey ate dinner with General Organa and Luke and Chewbacca (complaining volubly, as he had done all the way back from Mos Espa, about the heat, sand and cruelty to innocent electronic life of Tatooine) in a quiet corner of the mess, feeling thoughtful. The older generation largely left her to herself; she could tell by their respective Force senses that General Organa and Luke were supplementing their desultory conversation about Tatooine with a rapid-fire mental debriefing that was none of Rey's business, and Chewbacca was content to monologue.

 

Rey said she was tired and went to bed early. She switched Poe's crystal on and curled up on Finn's bunk, preferring the very slight disorder of his sheets – he must not have had time to make his bed before he’d left - to the hospital corners someone had imposed on her own. She breathed in air that both of them had moved in, and slid easily into sleep.

 

She woke in the middle of the night when the bunkroom's door slid open, and instinctively reached for her lightsaber, its hilt flying to her hand as her palm opened to hold it - but an instant later, her dark-adjusted eyes saw Poe raising his hands, and Finn whispered "Hey - _whoa_ , Rey, it's just us."

 

Rey dropped her lightsaber on the upturned crate doing duty as a bedside table. "Sorry."

 

"It's okay. Iolo said you were back," Poe said, closing the door behind them both.

 

"He said you looked... quiet," Finn volunteered. "Thoughtful." He dropped his pack and sat down on the end of his bed. "Was Tatooine bad?"

 

"No," Rey said. "Just..."

 

Poe disappeared into the fresher.

 

"Find anything?" Finn asked.

 

Rey leaned back against the hard, cold plascrete wall, and thought about the few days they had spent scurrying over Tatooine's desert sands, barely scraping the surface. "More questions than answers," she said, and smiled as Finn yawned widely. "I'll tell you about it in the morning."

 

Finn nodded, and rested his hand on her ankle under the blankets. "I'm glad you're home."

 

"Me too." Rey heard the tap turn on in the fresher as Poe went to wash up, and tilted her head back into the wall. "How've you been?"

 

"Good," Finn said. He flicked a glance at the fresher. "Poe's getting over it."

 

"Oh. The age thing?" Luke had noticed that there was something wrong between the three of them, but Rey hadn’t given him a full explanation; it was enough that her lessons, lately, had been noticeably focused on shielding, particularly in circumstances of emotional stress. Rey cared a great deal about the fact that their temporary breakdown in communications, and the ongoing distance between them, had hurt all three of them; she wanted to fix it. The age difference itself didn't concern her, except for how it had clearly hurt and worried Poe, and Poe's reaction had hurt and worried Finn. Rey was strongly opposed to anything that distressed either of them.

 

Finn nodded. "I keep telling him, you know, he doesn't need to worry about us, we can make our own choices. And he does know! I think it's just taking time, you know. To sink in." He shrugged. "He's worth waiting for."

 

Rey smiled.

 

"He gets - he cares about us, I think," Finn went on very seriously, "like he wants nothing bad to have happened to us ever."

 

Rey rolled her eyes with exasperation. "Has he noticed the war -"

 

"Yeah." Finn's soft brown eyes took on a dopiness that made Rey snort, and that she would never have admitted to finding adorable if Kylo Ren tortured her for a million years. "He just wishes we could have had peaceful childhoods, grown up happy, never had to face pain or hunger..."

 

"That's sweet," Rey admitted. "And stupid."

 

"My ears are burning," Poe yelled from the fresher.

 

Rey caught Finn's eye and giggled.

 

Poe appeared, slightly damp and entirely handsome, and levelled a playfully scornful look at Finn. "You smell."

 

"I let you have first crack at the fresher," Finn protested, palms opening wide. "I was being gentlemanly."

 

"Uh-huh," Poe said, and Finn slipped off the bed with an extra grin for Rey and vanished into the fresher.

 

Poe's smile softened as he caught Rey's eye. "We've missed you," he said, draping the towel he'd used to dry his face off roughly over the post at the end of Rey's bunk; his words very simple and very sincere. He must have washed his face with water after the sonic shower, Rey noted. There were still rogue droplets sliding down his temple and by the corner of his jaw.

 

Rey's heart melted. "I missed you too," she said. "On Tatooine..." She hunted for the words. "There were things I... wasn't allowed to say over a comm, and I... yeah." She shrugged uncomfortably, and chewed her lip, staring at the blanket. There was a small silence.

 

"Do you want a hug?" Poe said quietly.

 

Rey's head jerked up so sharply the muscles in her neck burned; she stared at Poe for a breathless second. She would never have asked, not even after the weeks of mending the links between them. She would have said it was too soon to try, that she didn't want to risk asking him for something he might not yet want to give, something that came too close for the distance he'd imposed.

 

He gave her a tiny smile and nodded, and she opened her arms to him, trying not to think about how open her face must be right now, how vulnerable she felt. Poe dropped to his knees beside the bed and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing her face into his neck, still damp in parts, his dark curls crisp from the sonic fresher. He gave good hugs; both of them did. Uncomplicated affection.

 

It wasn't something Rey was accustomed to.

 

"Is it okay if I kiss your cheek?" she whispered.

 

There was a small still pause, and then Poe nodded. "Yeah," he said, very softly. "Yeah, Rey. That's okay."

 

She pressed her lips to his cheek, dry and tentative, and was so surprised she actually blushed when Poe turned his head to one side and returned the gesture.

 

"We're all right?" she said, sounding kind of small, hating herself for it.

 

"We're good," Poe said, and Rey felt herself relax.

 

She kissed Finn on the cheek too when he came out of the fresher; Poe laughed at Finn's surprised expression.

 

"Apparently we all get a goodnight kiss," Poe said, grinning, and that did it: Finn refused to sleep without kissing both of them.

 

Curled up in the same room as the two of them, Rey slept better than she had for weeks.

 

***

 

_When Rey is seventeen, and having an entirely unrelated anxiety dream about falling through one of the wrecks she’s currently plundering, someone grabs her wrist and arrests her fall._

_At first Rey hardly recognises the_ _desert woman. Her heart is racing with terror, her mind running on of its own accord. How much further does she have to fall, and what will happen when she hits the bottom? She has to shove these questions out of her mind with real force, and it takes a while for replacement words to percolate._

_How, Rey says, why, what – I haven’t seen you for months!_

_You’re strong, my loved one, says the_ _desert woman. She is now holding both Rey’s hands in her own, gentle but firm. You don’t need me._

_I love you!_

_You don’t need me, the_ _desert woman repeats, and arches an eyebrow at Rey. Think. What does your heart tell you?_

_Rey asks herself, really asks herself, without resorting to the easy answer or the one she wants to give. More than ten years after the_ _desert woman first came to her, Rey knows that all her lessons are worth learning._

_You’re right, Rey says. It tells me you’re right. She scowls at the_ _desert woman. But it tells me I’m right, too._

_The_ _desert woman’s face crinkles into a smile. Well, then. Don’t forget to listen to it - and her grip on Rey’s hands loosens. Rey’s return grip tightens in panic._

_I’ll fall!_

_But not forever, my loved one, the_ _desert woman says. That’s a promise._

_Rey wakes up before she hits the ground_ _._


	12. Chapter 12

Returning to Lah’mu was like coming home, if Rey had a home; before she knew it she was swept up in Kaydel wanting help with her protocol droid and Black Squadron teasing her about her travels, the regular rhythms of her lessons and work with Luke. Her days turned into regular patterns, broken only by occasional missions for the Resistance, combat and reconnaissance and anything where a Jedi might be useful to break the shackles of fear the First Order was trying to close on the galaxy. Rey locked Merel Skywalker up in the back of her mind, and let herself focus on more proximate problems.

 

She was so busy focussing on the proximate problems that, when she limped back to Lah'mu with Luke after a battle that had dragged to a bitter draw, stopped near the mess and heard an inexplicable cheer go up, she was stunned into silence.

 

"Happy birthday," someone yelled, waving a cup at her in a friendly fashion.

 

Rey felt like her brain had dislocated itself and fallen out from between her ears. She was mostly standing up because Chewbacca was holding her up by the back of her shirt. She looked wildly at Jessika for clarification.

 

"You're twenty-one today," Jess explained, looking at her sideways like she was worried about something. "At least, that's the date you put on your papers -"

 

Rey made a noise indicating she understood, though she wasn't actually sure she did. She had given a day, almost at random, hoping it would be a placeholder for a time when she knew her real birthdate - and she had celebrated her twentieth birthday last year. It had been fun. But either she'd forgotten that birthdays, generally speaking, came round every year, or she'd simply failed to calculate the time she'd be gone accurately. She certainly hadn't planned what looked, to her hazy eyes, like a party in progress. They must be bored, or have something else to want to make a celebration out of. She definitely recognised those barrels of homebrewed disaster, and someone was hanging up battered coloured streamers.

 

"I think this is a bad idea," Jess was saying with unusual circumspection, looking at Chewbacca.

 

Chewbacca yowled that of course it was, and whose fucking idea was it, and Rey needed to go to the medical bay, not a birthday party she hadn't planned and was obviously too tired for.

 

"I'm not a cub," Rey interrupted, trying to keep her head straight.

 

You might as well be, Chewbacca growled back. Twenty-one is nothing.

 

"I want to go home," Rey said. The words slipped out of her; she crossed her eyes and tried to stare at her own mouth, surprised.

 

"Yeah," Jess said, patting her on the shoulder a little tentatively. "You should do that. General Chewbacca, sir, if you could - just walk Rey back towards her room - or I can take her - um, and then one of us can go and find Finn and Poe, they can't be far - hey, you, _cut that out_ -"

 

A pilot Rey didn't really know had ducked into the group around them and was standing directly in front of Rey, pushing a cup of something virulently blue into her hands. She slapped it away and stumbled backwards into Chewbacca.

 

"It's her party," the pilot protested.

 

"And those are your arms," Jess retorted. "You want to keep them?"

 

Chewbacca rumbled that if the pilot no longer required his arms, he, Chewbacca, would be only too happy to help.

 

"Snap!" Jess called, while the pilot scurried away. "We need Finn. Or Poe, one of the two -"

 

Snap had just fended off someone trying to force cups of the homebrew on the group standing around Rey. He shouldered his way into the circle, accidentally-on-purpose shoving the pilot who had tried to give Rey a drink as he went, and nodded at Jess. "Yeah, I'll do it." He peered at Rey. "You need to go to bed. You look like cream cheese."

 

"I feel like cream cheese," Rey mumbled. Her knees were not holding her up very well. None of the injuries she'd received had been dangerous, let alone life-threatening, but she was exhausted, and there was none of the elation of a victory to soar in her veins and keep her upright. If they'd won, really won, instead of carving out a draw and a messy retreat, she'd probably have taken a cup and joined in the party, uneasy as she might have been in the presence of so many people.

 

"Right," Chewbacca rumbled, turned her around, and propelled her out of the room. Jess hurried alongside them, trying to help support Rey with one hand, talking into her wrist bracelet with the other. It sounded like she was trying to contact Finn or Poe, a theory which was proven when Finn shot out of a side corridor in front of Rey and grabbed her by the shoulders as she wavered.

 

"Rey? Do you need the medical bay?"

 

_Yes_ , Chewbacca growled.

 

"No," Rey said, "just sleep."

 

Finn darted a quick glance between Chewbacca and Rey; Rey could feel the mulish set of her own jaw get more stubborn. "Sleep for a bit and then see," he compromised, "unless - "

 

"That's fine," Rey said, "that's - just - that's fine." She felt her knees buckle a little, and she sagged towards Finn.

 

Jess, Finn and Chewbacca shared a look over her head.

 

"Is this normal?" Finn said to Chewbacca. "They do this all the time? Jedi, I mean?"

 

_Luke did it_ , Chewbacca howled. _Don't ask me if that's normal_.

 

"Hey," Rey said dizzily. Everyone ignored her.

 

The next thing Rey knew, she was sitting on Finn's bunk, dazedly helping Finn get her out of her combat clothes and into sleeping clothes; he kept running careful hands over her limbs, checking her stomach for hard spots and her head for soft ones.

 

"'M not injured," Rey said. "S'just being tired." It was more or less accurate; her minor scrapes and strains had been healed up on the way home. The real exhaustion came from the fact that she'd had little chance to rest mentally after a running battle that had lasted a week. The Knights of Ren had nearly broken the unwilling host who had got them into the contested base in the first place, and Rey and Luke had taken it in turns to shore up the man's defences and soothe him over the course of a hyperspace flight which had never seemed to end. And then they'd had to protect him from the other evacuees, which had been a trial in itself. Rey had slept next to the Knights' victim, since she was younger and physically stronger than Luke, and had personally apprehended several people who thought he deserved to suffer more.

 

"Yeah, Rey," Finn said, pulling her shirt down over her head.

 

She collapsed onto her side, and pulled at the blanket feebly, trying to drag it over herself. Finn lifted it and dropped it on top of her, and then the door swung open.

 

"Poe," Rey said, and her smile came easily to her face, the only thing that wasn't a strain.

 

"Hey," Poe said, smiling back at her, but he looked harassed, and there was an edge of worry in his voice. He was wearing his flight suit, but the top was unzipped and the sleeves tied carelessly around his waist, over a slightly sweaty olive shirt, smeared with black streaks. He must have been working on Black One again.

 

"You break it up?" Finn asked, climbing over Rey and sliding under the covers with her. Rey snuggled back against him; he felt strong and solid and safe, and for the first time since Rey had set foot on Echo Base, she felt like she could close her eyes without worrying about what she'd see when she opened them. She had been used to sleeping lightly on Jakku; it was strange how painful going back to that felt.

 

"Yeah." Poe crossed the room to join them. "They were just looking for an excuse. Everyone's been on edge lately, with Echo Base and the setback in the Eridthan System. They wanted to let off some steam, but it was going bad, you know how you can tell." He shook his head, and knelt down by the bed with a sigh. "How's the patient?"

 

"'M not sick," Rey insisted. "'M just tired."

 

Poe's wide mouth twisted in a sympathetic crooked smile, which was unfairly attractive. "You look pretty ill."

 

Rey let out a groan of frustration, and turned her face into the pillow. Poe laughed a little, and Finn kissed the back of her neck affectionately, apparently ignoring layers of sweat and grime.

 

"I can give you two space, if you want," Poe offered, sounding hesitant; Rey heard the rustle of him shifting to get up.

 

One of her hands shot out, almost without her conscious intervention, and she grabbed the nearest available bit of him - which happened to be the front of his shirt.

 

"No," she mumbled, turning her face to one side. "Stay. Please. Stay."

 

No-one said anything for a minute, and then Poe let out a small noise Rey couldn't parse, and separated Rey's hand from his shirt, tangling his fingers with hers instead. Rey took stock of her surroundings - Finn on her left, Poe on her right, both of them safe and well - and relaxed into the mattress with a small, boneless sigh.

 

"I got Luke," Finn said. He was propped up on his elbow, talking over Rey to Poe; his left hand rested on the curve of her waist where her shirt had rucked up, his thumb rubbing soothing little circles over the muscle. He couldn't see the pink new scar there, and Rey had been given enough bacta that the texture was no different and enough analgesia that it wasn't sensitive. She wondered what he'd think when he saw it.  


 

"- said he'd come as soon as he could, should be here any minute now," Finn was saying, when Rey drifted back into consciousness.

 

"Major Kalonia's coming along, too," Poe said. "Or sending someone. She said she'd do whatever was faster. Rey's too good at tricking the med-droids-"

 

"'S a skill," Rey murmured, grinning.

 

“It’s not a good thing!” Finn said.

 

“You do it,” Rey said, and yawned so widely her jaw felt like it might split.

 

“That’s not - okay, well -“

 

Poe laughed, which made Rey smile. “She’s got you, buddy.”

 

“Fine,” Finn groused, and they heard a sharp rap at the door. Poe got up, and let Major Kalonia and a visibly concerned Luke in.

 

Audibly concerned, too. Rey winced and raised a shield. _I’m just tired_ , she told him silently.

 

_Let Major Kalonia be the judge of that_ , Luke replied, folding his arms.

 

Finn and Poe helped Rey sit up, and she submitted patiently to a medical examination that felt endless, Major Kalonia checking her reflexes, her pupils, her temperature, a tiny blood sample.

 

“I just want to sleep,” she complained at one point, raising her arms against pressure to prove she still had muscle tone.

 

“And you can,” Major Kalonia replied, unruffled. “When I’m finished.”

 

Rey sighed.

 

Eventually, the poking and prodding was done. Major Kalonia smiled very dryly at her, and let her collapse backwards onto the bed at last.

 

“Exhaustion,” she said. “Nothing else.” She glanced sideways at Luke. “Unless Master Luke is aware of something I’m not.”

 

Luke shook his head slowly. “I’m not surprised you’re tired,” he told Rey. “I’m just surprised it took you so dramatically.”

 

“I’m not as strong as you,” Rey murmured. Poe tucked the blanket over her a little more neatly, almost as if he didn’t realise he was doing it.

 

“You are,” Luke said dryly. “You’re just less practised.”

 

“Same thing,” Rey said, and snuggled back into Finn. Even through half-closed lids she could see that Luke was watching the three of them very shrewdly, and Poe seemed stiff and defensive, like he might bolt if startled. Rey reached out for his hand and tangled her fingers with his, and forced her eyes open to stare at Luke, daring him to say something, anything.

 

Luke’s mouth twitched slightly, and he shook his head a little. But he didn’t seem annoyed or disapproving, and Poe relaxed a little. Rey felt Finn smile against her temple.

 

Major Kalonia looked a little persecuted. “If I’m not needed here…”

 

“Thanks, Major Kalonia,” Rey said, and yawned.

 

Major Kalonia cracked a rare smile. “All you need is sleep and rest, young woman. I know Dameron and Rook will keep an eye on you. I’m not sure I’ve ever been less worried about a patient.”

 

“Told you I was fine,” Rey informed Finn and Poe.

 

“Ha,” Finn said, and Rey felt his chest expand as he drew breath for more.

 

“You’re not fine,” Major Kalonia said, talking over all of them with ease. “That’s not the same thing. Get some sleep, and eat a full meal when you wake up. Ease off the lessons for a few days, and if you go back into combat before I clear you I will murder you.” She looked sideways at Luke. “And I will go after you next, Master Luke, don’t think I won’t.”

 

Luke raised his hands, smiling. “Would I dare?”

 

“Probably,” Major Kalonia said unflatteringly. She pointed at Rey. “I’m signing you off for two days, and Dameron and Rook for one. You need someone to keep an eye on you. In fact, patients like you require at least two people, so I’m pleased to have them available to me. For once.” She stood with a sigh. “Take care of yourself, and if you feel any worse, come to the medical bay.”

 

Rey nodded, already half asleep. She heard Major Kalonia leave, and felt Luke’s fingers brush her forehead.

 

_Sleep_ , he said to her. _Heal_.

 

Rey murmured wordless agreement, and snuggled back into Finn’s arms.

 

She didn’t wake when Poe drew his fingers from her grip. Which meant he must have waited for a long, long time after she had truly fallen asleep.

 

 

Rey slept through the night and the best part of the following day, and woke to find herself extremely hungry.  Finn and Poe had left a note to say that they were in the mess, eating; Rey went and joined them, demolished a large and varied selection of foods that Poe said most people would find disgusting, and began to feel a bit more like herself. Eating more slowly now that her first hunger had been satisfied, she had the leisure to look around her, and to notice that the atmosphere was rather subdued. There was a slight edge of sullenness to it, too.

 

“What happened?” she said, interrupting Finn and Poe’s idle discussion of a betting pool that revolved around gossip that had happened while she was gone. “It’s… quiet.”

 

Finn poked at his own meal. “People wanted to let off steam, things were going bad.” He dragged his teeth over his lower lip and twitched his eyebrows, making a _nothing serious_ face. “It happens. Too many people in too small a base, a few grudges, a few small setbacks, everyone’s got cabin fever. And then… the battle you just came back from. People are frightened of the Knights of Ren. They feel more real to them.”

 

“You’re not,” Poe said. He was smiling so softly at Finn that Rey almost couldn’t believe she was allowed to see it, or that Poe meant that smile to be there.

 

Finn shrugged. “I’ve always been afraid of the Knights of Ren, man, you get used to it.”

 

Poe pressed his lips tightly together, and Rey didn’t need to be Force-sensitive to realise that he was thinking of Kylo Ren and the Finaliser. “Do you?”

 

Rey kicked him under the table, not very hard. “You know none of them are going to get anywhere near you. I won’t let it happen.” Her voice sounded rough out of her own mouth, too sincere.

 

Poe’s face lightened a little and twisted wryly, but he said nothing. Rey knew this was too public a place for him to say what he would like to say.

 

“There are shields,” she said gruffly, shovelling food into her mouth and talking through it to hide the awkward way she cared. “Ways. I could teach you.”

 

Poe’s smile was small but real. “Maybe another time.” He took a gulp of his drink and continued, with determined cheerfulness - though in a tone that wouldn’t carry beyond their table. “Don’t worry about any bad feeling. It’s being dealt with. It’ll be sorted by Reset.”

 

Rey frowned at her plate, trying to match up calendars and run hyperspace calculations in her head. Eventually, she shook her head and gave up. “When is Reset?”

 

“Two and a half weeks,” Finn said. “Got a costume?”

 

“I haven’t got a _clue_ ,” Rey said, without thinking about it, and both Poe and Finn laughed.

 

It made her smile, and she wasn’t sure if it was because it was funny, or because all three of them were together again.

 

Rey went and found Luke after she’d eaten. It wasn’t difficult; he was sitting and meditating in the room they’d claimed for training, on the days when it rained so much even Luke thought training outdoors was a bad idea. Rey didn’t disturb him, or the stillness and quiet of the spartan room, with the training droids and lightsabers lined up on a shelf, the small collection of holos of famous Jedi sites attached to one wall. For a second, she wandered over to this and ran her eyes over the images she knew so well - the archival holo of the Holy City of Jedha, the Temple in Coruscant before the fall of the Republic, the Second Jedi Temple during its building, Luke a tiny figure in one corner mending a steamroller and waving to a droid carrying a large prefab panel.

 

Rey turned back into the centre of the room and unrolled one of the spare mats on the bare concrete floor, sat down on it, and slid into a meditative state herself. It was never easy, after a prolonged period of stress or fighting, but once she managed to stop her mind and calm her heart long enough to feel the pulse of the Force in everything around her, she felt better.

 

After a while, she opened her eyes and found that Luke had stopped meditating and was tinkering with his lightsaber and a set of tools. He looked up when she stirred and promptly burned himself on something, swearing in Huttese and shaking his scorched thumb.

  
Rey laughed at him.

 

“No respect for the elderly,” Luke complained, without any heat. “Feeling better?”

 

Rey uncrossed her legs and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She nodded.

 

“I was glad you had Poe and Finn to watch over you,” Luke said neutrally. “You had a normal reaction to the overexertion of the last few weeks, but that’s not to say it wasn’t concerning.”  
  
Rey shrugged. She’d had infinitely worse on Jakku, as far as she was concerned, and she was still alive.

 

Luke frowned at her. “Take it seriously.”

 

“I did take it seriously,” Rey said. “I went straight to bed.”

 

Luke rolled his eyes, but left it for the moment. Rey wondered if he was also going to leave the comment he’d made about Poe and Finn: she had a dim memory of him looking strangely at the three of them, at her curled up against Finn and holding Poe’s hand.

 

He wouldn’t say anything to anyone else, though, even if he had questions for her. Rey found that comforting. She always shied away from too-close examination – it always made her feel like some kind of predator was circling – and she had a faint, worried thought that speculation might break this fragile thing they were rebuilding.

 

“I couldn’t help noticing,” Luke said at last. “The three of you…”  


Rey raised her eyes from the mat and met Luke’s gaze. He looked very serious.

 

Rey cleared her throat. “Are you going to tell me we shouldn’t? Be… us.”

  
“No,” Luke said dryly. “I’m not stupid. I can see you wouldn’t listen to me if I did.”

 

Rey reddened.

 

“I can also see quite easily that the three of you are a good team.” Luke got to his feet and raised his hands to the sky, stretching onto his toes. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

 

Rey considered this honestly, and grimaced. “Not really.”  


“I don’t think anyone ever does,” Luke said wryly. His eyes were a little misty, like he was remembering something.

 

“We’re – um.” Rey closed her mouth and licked her lips. “We’re… working it out.”  


Luke nodded. “Well. As I said before. Tell me _before_ it becomes a problem.”

 

“I will,” Rey promised, and hoped she would never have to. She screwed her face up.

 

“Is it incredibly complicated?” Luke said, sounding a little overwhelmed already, which made Rey relax and smile. “I could never keep up with my students’ love lives. I’ve always wondered if that was why the old Jedi banned them: too messy.”  


Rey snorted. “No,” she said. “It’s not.” She twisted her fingers in the loose material of her trousers, and shook her head. “Not really.”


	13. Chapter 13

 

Reset fell two weeks later. Rey had always been a little curious about the idea of it, about coming together to remember the lost; on Jakku if you mourned anything you mourned alone, and tried not to think too hard about what you’d lost. There was no time or space to grieve for yourself, let alone to share in anyone else’s grief.

 

There had also definitely not been any parties like the ones that followed the communal ceremony of remembrance and the lighting of the bonfire, either. Rey had been a little blindsided by it, the first time she went. This year she looked forward to it, even though it would almost certainly rain again, and they’d probably end up dancing in a hangar while the rain hammered down outside and they all got sweaty and dizzy and drunk.

 

She dressed as a blood ghoul in the end, one of the scariest myths she’d known on Jakku, in white and grey paint and loose whitish rags, her hands dipped in red; she pulled her hair loose and tousled it, and Jess helped her paint her face to make her eye sockets look deep and dark, make her eyes disappear. The rain started even before the ceremony of remembrance was over, and the General’s white dress quickly soaked at the shoulders as she walked out to the bonfire outside the hangar, the dark blue veil pinned to her crown braid hanging wet after the first dash of rain; standing with Finn and Poe off to one side, Rey saw her grimace and say something wry to Lando Calrissian, who threw his head back and laughed, before offering his arm to her as they walked away.

 

“Why does she never stay for the party?” Rey asked Poe, putting her arm around Finn’s shoulders and leaning against him, accidentally smearing white and grey paint over his back: it had dried, but now it was running in the rain.

 

Poe shook his head and leaned a little closer to make himself heard. “Different party. Less dancing. Better alcohol.”  
  
Finn kissed Rey’s temple, where her loose hair fell down past her shoulders, and raised his eyebrows at Poe. “Sounds like less fun.”

 

“Some day I am going to get you two something to drink that couldn’t pass as paint-stripper,” Poe sighed, as the three of them turned to head back into the hangar where set-up for the party was now taking place.

 

“Is that a promise?” Rey asked, slinging her free arm around his shoulders and spreading the paint about with few qualms. She knew it would come off.

 

“Yeah,” Poe said, and coughed. He was a little tense under her arm, but when she looked at him he was a bit flushed and smiling slightly, something new in his eyes. “Yeah, if you like, it’s a promise.”  


Before either of them could answer, Poe had been summoned by a group of old friends from the Republic Navy who had defected recently, Finn had been asked to help manage the barbecue grills, and Rey had been co-opted to get some decorations higher than anyone else could without risking a lethal fall. But Rey hoped Poe knew what they would have said.

 

The bonfire stayed lit, partly because of the viciously flammable fuel waste Rey had helped drench it in and partly because the rain, for a wonder, eased off, leaving the grey skies to clear slowly to a beautiful, deepening violet night sky, the moons hanging luminous among the stars.

 

A fighter Rey knew she’d been introduced to but whose name she couldn’t remember held out his hands to her, as she put the last of the decorations into place: the music had already started. She’d fought alongside him on the surface of Batreth: he had a vicious scar down the side of his freckled face that made all his smiles sweet and lopsided, and his almond-shaped dark eyes were always bright. Rey remembered liking that about him, in the short breaks between attacking First Order waves and the messy hours of wound care afterwards. She’d met a lot of young Resistance fighters, and a significant number of them were now posted elsewhere, dead, or invalided into different areas of the service.

 

“Dance?” he asked.

 

“Sure,” Rey said, dusting off her hands, and whirled into the music. She was a much better dancer than she had been at nineteen, and when he complimented her on it, she gave all the credit to Poe and Finn.

 

“Some of it’s just you, though,” he said, twirling her under his arm a little clumsily. He yanked a bit: Poe was a much more skilled lead, and she always knew what Finn was going to do next regardless of whether he was leading properly. “I mean, I’ve seen you with a lightsaber.”  


“That’s the Force, that’s different,” Rey answered, now having to shout to be heard over the music.

 

“I thought the Force was meant to move in all living things?” he shouted back.

 

“Well – yeah,” Rey said, and actually had to stop to think about this, at the wrong moment in the dance. He collided with her, but didn’t seem too annoyed about it. Finn would just have stopped with her, Rey thought. “I guess. But I’m not very good at this… aspect. I guess.”

 

“Practise,” he suggested, and took hold of her hands again. He was very close to her.

 

“Right,” Rey said, staring into his eyes and seeing something more than just brightness there, and thinking _kriffing hells_. She finished the dance with him, and discovered an abrupt need for a drink; when he offered to go with her, she agreed, but immediately attached herself to the small group of X-wing pilots clustered around Iolo near the drinks table, which included Poe and Jess. Iolo was telling tall tales of improbable crash-landings, which Rey could justifiably claim to be interested in as a pilot, and it was easier to manage interest from people she wasn’t equally interested in when she wasn’t alone.

 

The fighter, whose name Rey was now actively chasing through the highways and byways of her mind, looked disappointed. Rey gave him a rueful shrug, and took a large gulp of her punch, turning her attention to the details of Iolo’s stories.

 

Poe glanced over her shoulder, and presumably saw the fighter retreating. He looked down at Rey with his eyebrows raised. “Poor Mateo,” he said, half a joke. “Brutally shot down.”

 

Rey stuck her tongue out at him. “You dance with him. You’re the one who remembered his name.”

 

“Ouch,” Poe said, with a half-startled laugh.

 

Rey shrugged awkwardly. “He wanted something. I don’t…”

 

“Did he make you uncomfortable?” Jess asked. Both she and Poe now had narrowed eyes that didn’t bode well for Mateo.

 

Rey took another gulp of the punch, which was strong enough to inspire her to blunt honesty. “Everyone who tries to get close to me when I didn’t invite them in makes me uncomfortable. It’s fine.” It was true, though even after extensive conversations with Luke she wasn’t sure if it was a Jakku thing or a Jedi thing. The closer she got to people, the more she picked up on their thoughts and feelings, and there was only a certain number of people she could do that for before feeling overwhelmed. Large collections of sentient life in general deafened her unless she was careful with her shields, and there was no amount of shielding that could shut down – say – the General’s, or Luke’s, or Finn’s or Poe’s feelings in her mind.

 

It was also the case that, in Niima Outpost, nobody made overtures like that without having some kind of price in mind – and you’d better be sure you were ready to pay it.

 

“That does not sound fine,” Poe said.

 

“On a scale of one to Jakku –”

 

“Oh, man,” Jess said, knocking back whatever she was drinking, which was violently pink and looked stronger than the punch. “Rey, if I dance with you, will you stop depressing me?”

 

Rey laughed, and pushed her punch into Poe’s free hand; he complained, but there was a smile on his face as he watched the two of them join the dancers.

 

Jess was a good dancer, and the music now playing wasn’t timed for any of the common partner dances that required a leader and follower, so before long the two of them had attracted a group, and Rey was happily moving with the rhythm, remembering at least ninety percent of the common steps and flailing her way through the rest in a way that made Jess laugh and pull her in for one of the double spins they both enjoyed. There was just enough of the punch starting to burn in Rey’s veins for her to loosen up without causing unexpected objects around her to float, and she was happy to dance with a couple of strangers for a few moments, quickly returning to Jess in the tangle of moving bodies when she got bored or wanted to find the person she’d joined the dancefloor with. Finn turned up, after a few minutes, and she and Jess finished the song in a whirling tangle with him that Finn declared at a yell made him feel sick, how the hell did they do that?

 

Rey kissed his mouth instead of laughing. Jess planted a smacking kiss on his cheek, smearing shimmer blue lipstick all down the gold dusted over his cheekbones and jaw.

 

“Luckiest guy in the Resistance,” Finn announced, putting an arm around each of their waists. Rey heard, out of the corner of her mind, someone thinking _fuck it, I think he really **is** her boyfriend_ , and rolled her eyes. Some people obviously paid no attention.

 

“Big deal,” she said, over the thundering intro of the next song, “I want the rest of my punch, dance with Jess.”

 

Finn let her go at once, with a quick kiss on her forehead, and then disengaged from Jess as well for the sole purpose of sweeping her an exaggerated bow. “May I have this dance?”

 

Jess laughed, pretended to curtsy in her white, improbably high-split floaty dress – there were at least five or six Princess Leias of all genders and species floating around, but Jess’s hair was long enough for the famous buns, which gave her an edge – and put one hand on Finn’s waist, clasping his left hand in her free one. The exaggerated stateliness of the gesture was all wrong for the music, which made it hilarious to a group of people who were passing steadily through tipsy to wasted.

 

Rey headed back to where she had left Poe, and found he’d finished the punch she’d left him with. She slapped his shoulder lightly.

 

“Ow!” he protested, with an exaggerated pout that quickly melted into a snicker when she mock-glared at him.

 

“You finished my drink!”

 

“You just handed it to me,” Poe said, eyes sparkling, “how was I supposed to know -?”

 

Rey took the punch cup he was holding away from him and finished it. “Payback,” she said, and shook her head apologetically at someone else who came over to ask her to dance. “I wanted to ask you about what Iolo was saying, about the quadruple engine gundark failure –”

 

Poe was looking at her oddly.   


“What?”

 

Poe jerked his head at the person who’d started to ask her to dance, a Twi’lek who was now tearing up the beaten earth of the dancefloor with Kaydel. “You don’t have to sit here chatting to me, Rey, not if you want to dance.”  


Rey stared at him. “And you don’t have to sit here chatting to me if _you_ want to dance.”

 

“That’s different.”  


Rey seriously considered bouncing the disposable punch cup off his skull, and by the way Poe eyed her, he knew it. “Poe, I have nearly everything I want.”

 

“What are you missing?” Poe said automatically, like he’d go and fire up Black One and get it for her if she just gave him the right directions. Rey had heard him use that tone for Finn before; it always made her catch her breath. A wave of affection swept over her.

 

“An end to the war,” Rey said. “Kylo Ren’s head on a platter. My parents’ names.” She felt herself flush red. “And –”

 

“What?” Poe said, equally automatically. She had her eyes caught on his and couldn’t look away.

 

“One more thing,” Rey said, half a whisper, too scared to say even this much aloud, and it was Poe’s turn to blush.

 

“Poe!” Snap appeared from nowhere and grabbed Poe’s arm. “Dance with us! Black Squadron reunion on the dancefloor. Come on, you know you’re better than everyone but Jess –”

 

“Not right now,” Poe said, shaking him off.

 

“For Force’s sake,” Snap complained, and Rey heard _fuck me, the three of them need to get it together_ and wrapped herself in another layer of shielding, hoping her blush wasn’t getting worse.

 

“Two minutes,” Poe said, “I was explaining something.”

 

“Fine,” Snap said, and pointed at Rey. “Rey, you’re our only hope – get this stubborn bastard on the dancefloor when he’s done rabbiting on, won’t you?”

 

Rey saluted extremely sloppily, and Poe rolled his eyes at Snap’s retreating back.

                                                                                                                     

Then he looked back at Rey, and Rey found herself a little bit breathless, standing on the edge of a precipice with her toes already out over the abyss. Looking at Poe, she thought he might be feeling the same way.

 

“So,” Poe said, slightly unevenly, and ran a hand through his hair, which Rey knew was a nervous tic but which also made it fall even more perfectly over his forehead. “Gundarks.”

 

They retreated back from the edge of the precipice, and Rey found herself able to draw a full breath again.

 

She pulled Poe onto the dancefloor when he’d finished explaining why Iolo’s story didn’t actually break the laws of physics, and felt like his hand was burning hot in her touch. True to Snap’s description, the entirety of Black Squadron was dancing together in a loose circle: Rey abandoned Poe, not without a slight feeling of loss, and joined Finn, who needed rescuing from an accountant who was this close to draping himself over Finn and calling it a day. The pair of them danced alone for a few minutes, and then the song changed, a whoop went up from the crowd under the purple sky, and – to Rey’s surprise – she found Poe at Finn’s shoulder.

 

“Can I – uh, can I join?”

 

“Yeah,” Finn said, evidently as startled as Rey. “Of course.”

 

Rey gave Poe a challenging look. “Friends can dance together. Right?”

 

It went without saying, here in the Resistance – but then, it wasn’t what she _was_ saying.

 

There was a slight, telling pause. “Yeah,” Poe said, and then there was another. “Yeah – friends, of course.”  


Finn looked puzzled. Poe was blushing.

 

Rey stored away a tiny victory, and let the music carry her.

 

 

Later, in a break in the dancing, they sat near the refreshment tables eating: Finn had finished his meal, and was lying with his head in Rey’s lap and his feet in Poe’s, occasionally stealing something off one of their plates.

 

“How come you two never,” Poe said suddenly, as if the words had been pulled from him.

 

“Never what?” Finn asked, a little drowsily, his eyes half-closed and long lashes flickering over his cheeks. He’d been working hours lately that were even more bizarre than usual – from what Rey had heard, foiling a plot to kidnap the General led by Kylo Ren himself, which seemed in keeping with Ren’s general level of amateur dramatics and genuine dangerousness.

 

Poe gestured vaguely at the crowd of people clustered around the refreshments table. “You could have pretty much anyone on this base for the asking. Either of you. For a relationship, or for – just for fun. There are people with _posters_ of you on their walls. And you obviously – you don’t get jealous of each other with. With other people.”  
  
“No, we don’t get jealous,” Rey said. She felt jealousy was pointless: she knew Finn was coming back for her, and she knew he knew the same about her. She only felt jealous when she saw Poe was comfortable with someone, and worried that he would never be as comfortable with them as he had once been again. It didn’t happen often. “And maybe we could have someone else. But we know what we want.”  


“Doesn’t mean we’ll get it!” Finn said, holding up a hand like he was calling a halt to proceedings. “But we’re patient.” He closed his eyes. “We can wait.”

 

“Right,” Poe said, very softly. “Right.”

 

They didn’t dance with Poe again that night. But all three of them staggered home to their bunks together.

 

***

 

The next time Rey had a moment to think about Merel Skywalker and the knowledge she had gained on Tatooine, it was several months after she had returned from that planet, and she was crossing lightsabers with Kylo Ren. Rey was almost offended on behalf of Finn, and, by proxy, Intelligence. They had been assured that the Knights of Ren were on the other side of the galaxy, and yet here their master was. He was often unpredictable, but Finn prided himself on being able to predict him anyway.

 

Rey felt Kylo Ren before anyone heard or saw his approach, and ran to Captain Brachis to tell him the bad news. Captain Brachis issued several bad words, the local people they were supposed to be providing with material aid and relief after the depredations of the First Order issued many more, and the evacuation of the non-combatants to deep catacombs began. The scene turned rapidly from that of a humanitarian relief post to a fortress on a war footing.

 

It took more than half an hour, after everyone had settled into their posts, for the stormtroopers to arrive.

 

“He must still have been in orbit,” Captain Brachis said wonderingly, casting a sneaking glance at Rey where she knelt next to him, and making a rapid gesture from head to chest. Rey didn’t recognise it, but there were a lot of people in the galaxy who worshipped the Force, and many more who held to a faith that had no part in the Force.

 

Rey shrugged uncomfortably, her lightsaber’s hilt resting quiescent in her hand. She never had any trouble finding Kylo Ren’s signature now, possibly because they were cousins. Distant cousins.

 

Rey was grateful for the adjective.

 

Kylo Ren tried to burst through the defences and overwhelm the townspeople; plainly his role here was to act as the wrecking ball, the blaster cannon, and destroy a defensive redoubt that had held out against the First Order’s less supernatural forces. Possibly this was some kind of a punishment, a trivial errand, or maybe it was just a stop on his latest murder tour of the galaxy, one he didn’t expect to last long. But Rey had slipped away from her place at Captain Brachis’ side and was waiting for him.

 

It was obvious enough that he aimed for the great wall that barred the entrance to the city, and Rey did not try to stop him aiming an immensely powerful percussive wave at it. She had gone dark the moment she heard Kylo Ren coming, drawing everything that made herself her within her skin – not because she thought Kylo Ren had not sensed her, the same way she had heard him coming, but because she did not want him to know her movements in the meantime. She was fairly confident he wasn’t good enough to find her if she shielded herself.

 

The wall held, though it shivered. The iron-hard wood and tested metal of the gates blew in, splinters and shards flying everywhere; Rey, who had been crouched by the gate with an arm over her face, escaped without more than a cut or two and ringing ears, but she had bacta tubes in easy access pockets, and it was the work of less than a second to break the seals and squeeze their contents into her ears. She dropped them, prayed to the Force that no-one else had been worse hurt by the debris, and stepped into the empty space, dropping her concealing shields.

 

By the way he halted dead, mid-slow triumphant stride, Rey could see that she’d been right and he couldn’t follow her movements. She could also, for a moment she despised, see Han Solo in him. In that wavering foot held off the ground was the man who had cried with injured innocence ‘when have I ever cheated you?’ to the Kanjiklub, and been immediately caught out.

 

A hundred stormtroopers’ rifles raised, aimed directly at her heart. Rey was embarrassed for them, foolish enough to walk into the gully before the town without checking the cliffs – maybe they thought that their twisted Jedi escort would protect them, though why they thought that when Kylo Ren frequently forgot to protect himself Rey didn’t know – and for a second she was afraid for herself. That was too many blaster bolts to deflect. She hoped they wouldn’t fire before Kylo Ren gave the order. She hoped he would be stupid enough not to give the order.

 

She thought he would. He took her existence very personally.

 

For a breathless moment, nobody did anything.

 

“Hello again,” Rey said, reaching for the deep, centred calm she had felt for a precious few moments on Starkiller, and igniting her lightsaber. “Looking for something?”

 

Kylo Ren’s foot fell solidly to the ground, and he drew it back into a fighting stance, and pulled his own lightsaber from its clip. “You would fight me, scavenger?”

 

Rey shrugged. “Maybe this time I’ll cut your face all the way off.”

 

“You think you can defend this entire town? By yourself?” Kylo Ren’s head shook in that heavy helmet. “You are foolish.”

 

“Come here and fight me,” Rey said. “Unless you’re scared of losing again. I guess you could have your stormtroopers shoot me… if you’re too big a coward to fight me yourself.”

 

The sick red glow of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber sputtered into life, and high on the cliffs, the Resistance’s fighters opened fire on the stormtroopers below.

 

General Organa had told Rey that in the Clone Wars Jedi were generals. Rey couldn’t imagine it – though she had no difficulty imagining General Organa in that position. She couldn't do strategy or tactics the way Finn and Poe could in their separate ways, and she had no sense of the greater tactical sweep of the battle. She knew nothing but her fight with Kylo Ren.

 

He was much as she remembered him from Starkiller, only better, faster, unencumbered by his wounds, which had the best part of two years to heal. He still hesitated, but he wasn’t as hesitant. He still called out to her that she needed a teacher, a better teacher, someone who could show her the true power of the Force, and Rey still snarled in wordless reply. It was a harder fight, a fiercer one, but Rey was harder and fiercer than she had been then, better trained and better able to meet him, and she didn’t have to give ground the way she had on Starkiller. She knew her lightsaber; she remembered his. He still took risks, leaving himself carelessly open – either he didn’t care about the possibility of injury, or he was too sloppy to counter it - and now she knew better ways to take advantage. She knew how to move, and she could take advantage of her greater speed, of her greater resilience and precision. It was no surprise that someone as tall and powerfully built as Kylo Ren was accustomed to battering his opponents into submission, but Rey was never there to be beaten. She slipped through his fingers and he could not catch her.

 

He caught her lightsaber in his cross bar for one long minute, pressing close, almost a mockery of flirtation. Rey braced her back foot and held her ground, waiting for the right moment to disengage, slip sideways and send him sprawling.

 

He was not trying to get into her head. Rey held her focus, just in case.

 

“Skywalker has taught you well,” Ren said, still trying to force her into the ground. “You are far more skilled.”

 

“I’ll send him your regards,” Rey said through gritted teeth, sweat dripping down her face and muscles screaming, but she had faced worse.

 

Ren wore his mask, unlike their previous duel. Rey could not read his face. But she knew the wave of hate that came off him for what it was.

 

“Count yourself lucky this is me, not him,” she jibed, and when his cross bar slipped against her lightsaber she slid sideways and allowed his own momentum to carry him straight to the ground, danced round behind him, went on the attack just as he whirled and raised his lightsaber to clash with hers again.

 

“He would have destroyed you by now,” she finished breathlessly.

 

“Weak,” Kylo Ren snarled.

 

“Who?” Rey said, and parried a wild, slashing blow. He lost his temper too fast. He lost control.

 

“Family –“ Kylo Ren began, and then stopped suddenly. Rey’s blow did not meet the resistance she expected, and she was forced to flip and twist mid-air to stop herself sprawling to the floor.

 

Kylo Ren was staring at her behind the mask. “You…”

 

“Scavenger,” Rey said. “Jedi.”

 

“Skywalker?” Kylo Ren said faintly, as if in disbelief, and did not move.

 

Rey watched him, waiting for him to strike again. The battle raged around them, yelling, screaming, the high whining hiss of blaster fire and the crash of buildings collapsing, chunks of rock falling from the cliffs. But no-one touched either of them, Resistance or First Order. Rey had told Captain Brachis not to try to engage Kylo Ren unless absolutely necessary. She suspected that Kylo Ren had given even more definitive orders.

 

“What are you afraid of?” Rey taunted eventually, because that was all she could feel from him. Fear. She raised her lightsaber. “Come on,” she said. “Come on, fight me. Unless you’re too _scared_.”

 

“We are more alike than I had realised,” Kylo Ren said slowly. His lightsaber was still ignited, but he held its point low towards the ground. “That is why the lightsaber came to you – even though I am Darth Vader’s grandson. Even though I am the older. It fits in your hand; I can see. I did not know. I would not have fought you -”

 

Rey despised him for that, for his casual exemption of her from the torture she had faced on the _Finalizer_ , the same way Poe had faced it. He had known Poe as a boy, he had been fascinated by her, and neither of them had been truly human in his eyes. She only mattered when he thought she was part of his family – a part he hoped to use. He had killed his father and destroyed his uncle’s life’s work. He didn’t value anything he couldn’t use.

 

“Then I would have killed you,” Rey said calmly, and shifted her feet for better balance.

 

“You are _family_.”

 

Rey should have been furious. Instead, she felt very calm, and an impossible, impossibly familiar smile spread across her face. “What does your heart tell you?”

 

Then she did what Luke had expressly told her _not_ to do if she encountered Kylo Ren, a far stronger and more experienced duelist. She leaped forward, and went on the offense.

 

It rapidly became obvious that he now didn’t want to fight her; he moved round her, parrying her blows with defensive forms that owed more to the soresu Luke had been drilling her in than anything else, and Rey pressed him back, back, out of the town’s gates and the scorched arena where they had fought. He was giving orders – she could hear them dimly – and retreating. Rey only stopped chasing him when she began to worry that he was drawing her out so that the stormtroopers could swoop in from behind and capture her. He still obviously harboured hopes that she would come over to the Dark side as his student, and now they would have been magnified tenfold.

 

But the stormtroopers were retreating too, chased by fire from Resistance forces. Rey didn’t know if they were pursued. She could only see the white uniforms scarred and marked by blood and dirt disappearing, and Kylo Ren like a great angry crow among them.

 

She turned off her lightsaber, and yanked thoughtfully on her padawan braid. So now Kylo Ren knew. Which meant that shortly Snoke would know, and probably the rest of the First Order would too. There would be something for them to gain from that knowledge.

 

Rey didn’t think he had found the name of Merel Skywalker in her mind. It was too carefully locked away, and she thought, in any case, that Kylo Ren had been working off the affinity between the two of them, not any more specific knowledge drawn from her mind. She hadn’t felt an intrusion. But in either case, Kylo Ren must know that he didn’t have a younger sister or a first cousin. It was possible he suspected that Luke had somehow managed to hide a daughter, but Rey thought based on her meeting with Yolandé Naberrie that the affinity between closer cousins was so much greater that Kylo Ren could hardly have missed it in that first battle, and would not be able to mistake it now for anything other than the bond between close relatives.

 

They would have to work harder to find and protect any Skywalker descendants. They hadn’t made any progress since Tatooine, but it hadn’t mattered so much then; now that Kylo Ren knew there might be someone to find, it was imperative.

 

Rey pulled a face at the First Order retreat, and went to help Captain Brachis and the townsfolk. She would have a lot to tell Luke, when she saw him next.

 


	14. Chapter 14

Luke was not happy when he heard of Rey's battle with Kylo Ren. He'd been unhappy about a lot of things lately - her sneaking onto Coruscant and the Sith planet, for instance - but he was definitely displeased to hear that Rey had taken the field against Ren. He wasn't angry with her, since there had been no other option, but he was still not pleased that it had happened at all - and less pleased that this time Ren had been sufficiently in command of himself to recognise the tie between himself and Rey, tenuous as it was.

 

"In the old days," Luke complained, striding about his office, "padawans stuck close to their masters every moment of every day. I used to think that wasn't necessary, considering that you are, in fact, an _adult_ , and capable of taking care of yourself. Certainly as capable as I am of taking care of you." He ran his hands through his greying hair so that it went in all directions. "But now I think I could at least minimise the amount of trouble you manage to get into."

 

"General Organa would probably let you off your other Resistance work," Rey said, sitting on the edge of Luke's desk and swinging her feet.

 

Luke flung himself into his chair, and she twisted to sit cross-legged and caught the potted plant she almost sent flying. Apparently General Organa had been very amused by Rey's present of a potted plant to Finn, and even more entertained by the rumour she'd accidentally started along with it.

 

"She would," Luke said grimly. "If it were necessary." He eyed Rey. "You realise this means we have to find your family as quickly as we can?"

 

Rey thought of Kylo Ren, and thought of the amorphous warmth that her family had always been in her mind; thought of Merel Skywalker, unknown but full of courage, and the Skywalkers at the old Lars farmstead, and those she had never heard or thought of. Onor Skywalker, all her children. All those others, who had disappeared into the Hutts' record books, and the few who had fled, one way or another. Merel again, Shmi, Anakin - in some ways, Luke himself.

 

The task of finding the pair of human beings who had birthed and raised her seemed even more impossible than it had done before, sitting at a station in the Mos Espa archives. But faced with Kylo Ren, and his warped notion of what it was to have a family, Rey felt she had no choice but to try. And to succeed.

 

"Somehow," Rey answered.

 

Luke heaved a sigh. "I left a request with the archivist in Mos Espa. I heard back yesterday. Onor has living descendants, but none of them are missing a niece, or a daughter, or a cousin, and none of them use the Skywalker name any more. They've all been encouraged to take extended holidays, nonetheless. Somewhere they won't be traced."

 

Rey fidgeted with the stylus on the table. "I guess it's Merel I need to find, then."

 

Luke nodded, and then added a correction. "'We', Rey. You aren't doing this alone."

 

Rey grinned, and hid her pleasure in a smart remark. "You mean you don't even trust me to go investigate my family tree without getting into trouble?"

 

Luke's response was half grimace and half grin. "Rey, you're a Skywalker. You could find trouble in an empty room."

 

***

 

_There is nothing special about the evening when the desert woman comes to Rey when she is eighteen - - except that she sees the desert woman so seldom now that every occasion is special. Rey wakes lying on a sandy beach, among ruined metal and bent trees with feathery leaves; the dream woman is standing in water up to her ankles with her skirts held up, watching the sea wash over her feet._

_Rey sits up. My blood, she says._

_My loved one, the desert woman says, glancing back at her. The sun is bright; Rey squints into it and sees the glittering edge of a smile. Why the despair?_

_Rey thinks of the secret worries she's been nursing - that her family won't come back, that she will die alone and unmourned, that she will miss them by some unlucky chance. They consume her waking life, lately. It is lucky, in a way, that she has to work every minute she can, otherwise she would have too much time to think about them. They claw at the edges of her mind as it is._

_All sorts of reasons, she says._

_Darkness will pass, the desert woman says. Thoughtfully, she lets her skirts down into the water; the edges soak and flutter with the moving of the waves. It always passes, my loved one._

_How do I know that? Rey says, almost amused._

_Believe it, the desert woman says. You'll see._

***

 

Rey found that she knew very little about the progress of the war, too focused on the day-to-day work she carried out for her friends and the Jedi training she was spending an increasingly large part of her days on. She was aware that things were going well; she stayed off the holonews, but the senses she had developed on Jakku told her that the fighters, pilots, and ground staff who were based at Lah'mu were not unhappy or afraid. Oh, there were the usual grumbles - there was always something to be cross about, from the quality of the food to someone failing to rip off the vines before they damaged a roof to the paymasters being late with everyone's wages. But the Provisional Senate had rallied behind the Resistance at last, they had been able to prevent the construction of another Starkiller Base, and they were nowhere near winning yet but no-one was afraid that they were about to be annihilated, either. From what Poe said when he and Finn and Rey sat together in quiet corners of the mess with caf and sweet-tasting energy bars, wringing a few minutes' peace from long days and short nights, that had not been true during the Galactic Civil War. The Rebellion had teetered on the edge of disaster, fearing every step. Snoke was immensely powerful, but he lacked the galactic influence and grasp of political control that Emperor Palpatine had had - and no-one knew Kylo Ren's viciousness better than those sitting around the table, but he wasn't the killer that Darth Vader had been. He was also unreliable, prone to taking very large risks that often didn’t come off, or leaving himself open to attacks that never did more than wound him but did require the First Order’s resources on the field to be committed to his retrieval. He didn’t seem to care about his own survival – either that, or he was just blisteringly overconfident. 

 

("I gave him a fright for you," Rey had told Poe obliquely after her clash with Kylo Ren, sweeping past Poe’s desk while he was sweating over training rosters and dropping a kiss on the top of his head, and had been very surprised when Poe had grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap for a fierce hug.

 

"Next time I'll bring you his head," she'd promised, touched. Defeat his enemies in combat, Chewbacca had suggested, and it seemed to be good advice.

 

"Uh," Poe had said into her neck. "Please don't. You'll get blood all over the floor."

 

Rey had laughed and told him she wouldn't if he didn't like the idea, and then gone off to high-five Finn for the proof that Poe was learning to understand that they didn't want anyone else but him to join them, and didn't want to have to be themselves alone.)

 

No, without paying attention to the holonews, which Rey didn’t trust, Rey only knew pieces of the Resistance's success - and different pieces to the ones that Poe and Finn knew, at that. It wasn't that any one of them would have refused to tell the others the general outlines of pilot recruitment, or big intelligence leaks they were excited about, or even that a few of the strangers seen around Lah'mu lately moved with the Force as if they knew how to use it. But Rey was opposed to sticking her nose into Finn or Poe's business, and they had fine military ideas about keeping need-to-know information where it needed to be known, which meant that some questions were just never raised among them; it wasn't as if they lacked things to talk about as matters stood. So when Finn told them, in quiet, hushed tones during one of those early-hours caf sessions, that he would be joining an assault on a First Order-controlled mining planet in order to seize control of it and damage the First Order's supply lines, Rey was as stunned as Poe looked.

 

"They've given you your own mission to lead - Finn, that's _great_ , finally!" Poe said enthusiastically.

 

Finn flushed, and grinned helplessly at Poe. "General Calrissian put me forward. Said it was a waste to keep me here doing bits and pieces of intelligence work and not let me lead on something I did all the background work for." He nibbled on his energy bar, and nodded at Rey. "I have the combat experience."

 

She smiled, and kicked him gently under the table. The bandits they'd taken on last week had had nothing to do with the First Order, but they had been siphoning off the aid provided by Chandrila to a First Order-afflicted moon, and Rey and Finn had been well-suited to first spotting that something was wrong - the hunger of the children that Rey felt deep in her own gut, the tension of the adults like Niima Outpost faced with outlanders, the carefully-hidden discrepancies in the accounts and the nervousness of the settlement leader - and then drawing out and taking on the bandits.

 

They had stolen food from children, and taken some as hostages, raising them as their own fighters. Neither Rey nor Finn had taken kindly to that.

 

"You can handle yourself," she allowed, gulping at her caf. "Better than you could on Jakku."

 

"Hey," Finn said, pointing the half-eaten end of his energy bar at her. "I was a highly-trained trooper. I just didn't have any weapons, or any water, or any sleep, and I just crashed a ship -"

 

"My fault," Poe said, laughing and holding up his hands.

 

"Hey, man, nobody could have landed that thing with half the vanes blown out, it's a miracle we didn't just _die_."

 

"The Force was with you," Rey said, almost joking - but not quite. "When do you leave?"

 

"Day after tomorrow," Finn said. "Dawn."

 

Poe's grin turned contemplative, and Rey felt something in her slowly icing over. "That's soon," Poe said quietly.

 

Rey nodded. "When are you coming back?"

 

Finn lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. "Depends."

 

Rey nodded again, and looked down at her mug. Her knuckles were white around it but she didn't remember tightening her grip.

 

He'll come back, she told herself. Finn, of all people - Finn will come back. He came back for you before.

 

When they went back to their bunk room Poe paused with one hand on his mattress, cleared his threat, and said - "Uh, guys."

 

Rey hooked the belt and holster Finn and Poe had given her what felt like a lifetime ago over the end of her bed, and said "What?"

 

"Can we build a nest?"

 

Rey looked over at Finn, and saw her smile echoed on his face.

 

"Yeah," Finn said, plainly trying to restrain his enthusiasm.

 

Poe's cheeks were red; he dragged a hand over his face, obscuring his embarrassed smile. "I... I like it."

 

"So do we," Finn said.

 

They slept in a tangled knot; Finn even migrated off his supportive mattress in the night, chasing Rey's warmth as she twisted in her sleep. And Rey held close to herself, even in her dreams, that this was the first time Poe had asked if they could share their sleep since Tashel Quartus. It was a warm thought, and it shone.

 

  


The next day was a quiet one. There was nothing special about it: Finn was due to leave, yes, but there had been a hundred times when he had to go, or Poe, or Rey, or two or more of them at once. Rey didn’t expect anything special, no matter how many strange looks she caught from Poe, or how often he seemed ready to open his mouth and say something that never came out. That happened sometimes these days. She and Finn had talked about it, and agreed that it was best just to keep waiting, to let Poe come to them if that was what he wanted once he’d finished sorting his head out. Once, Rey had thought there might be something that would trigger it - some grand victory, all of them high on the promise of freedom, or some great injury that would force them all to reveal their feelings. But that hadn’t lasted long before she’d decided that she’d simply been watching too many holodramas. Rey had now seen thousands of these things where the hero flung himself at the heroine after a terrible injury, swearing passionate love. In her experience, it didn’t work like that, and even if it did everyone would be too exhausted to act on it.

 

No. Rey had resigned herself to thinking that if it happened, if Poe took that extra step back to them, it would be some unpredictable day. “We just have to wait,” Finn had said one night, staring gloomily up at the bottom of Poe’s empty bunk while his fingers traced idle patterns on Rey’s lower back. Rey had made a noise that didn’t mean anything, and turned her face into Finn’s bare chest.

 

He’d sighed, and stroked his hand through Rey’s loose hair instead. “I hear delayed gratification is a thing.”

 

Rey had bit him, but he’d liked it.

 

Rey had waited fifteen years for a family she didn’t know, and Finn had waited twenty just to be treated like a person. They both knew how to wait for something worth it; they thought they’d be waiting a very long time.

 

There was nothing special planned for this particular day, only routine tasks. Once they might have made a bit more of a fuss out of Finn leaving, without them, for an indeterminate time period, but that had been when the war was still new to Rey and Finn. They were accustomed to it now - and while it was always possible to be scared that one of them might die, even Rey no longer feared that the other two would just leave, so they felt no need to do anything special to mark it, to find a way to set aside their normal jobs. It wasn’t one of those days they took off as a group, going to explore somewhere, or to practise Rey’s reading and writing, or just to be by themselves - days which were growing common again, now that Poe was learning his way into the idea that he was allowed to care about them.

 

No, it was a perfectly normal day on Lah’mu - which was to say that it was raining, and Finn was sitting propped up against the hangar wall working while Rey ducked her lessons to tinker with Black One and Poe guiltily ignored his paperwork to run checks on the same craft. There was nothing special about the way Poe knew what tool Rey needed before she asked for it, or the way Rey stopped to help Poe with his test runs. There was nothing remarkable, about Finn climbing to his feet and scooping his datapads and flimsis into his bag before sweeping it onto his back, walking over to Rey and Poe and calling to them to come down for dinner, weren’t they hungry? BB-8 had already gone to recharge, and he was starving: could they get a move on?

 

There was nothing special about Rey letting go her grip and sliding down the side of Black One; nothing different about the way Finn caught her and steadied her and kissed the end of her nose. Nor was there anything notable about the way Poe finished making the ship safe and slid down the side as well, except that Finn automatically turned to catch him too, and - pressed against the side of the ship, Finn’s hands on his hips, their faces very close together - Poe suddenly went a brilliant red, something in his face Rey couldn’t quite parse, but she could hear him thinking so loudly it almost hurt. _I want this. I want this, I want them._

 

Rey held her breath.

 

“Do I get a kiss too?” Poe asked. His voice was rough with something. It might have been hope, or it might have been release.

 

“That depends,” Finn said, releasing his grip on Poe, hands hovering six inches away. “If you want one.” He took a careful step back, and Rey saw Poe’s chest jump with a jerky, in-drawn breath, his hands spasm. She was beginning to feel light-headed, and clamped down brutally on her excitement before it could spill out to be picked up on. “Sorry, buddy, didn’t mean to crowd you. Boundaries.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” Poe said, and cleared his throat. “I - uh, I - I want you here. Both of you. Crowding me.” He closed his eyes, head thunking against the side of Black One. “That doesn’t make sense.”

 

“It makes all the sense we need,” Finn said, and took a step back towards Poe, settling back into his space, his hands tangling gently in Poe’s curly hair.

 

Poe looked past him, and caught Rey’s eye. She let herself smile as brightly as she wanted to, and was rewarded with a dazzling, breathless grin in return - and then Poe turned his attention back to Finn, and leaned in to press his mouth to Finn’s, light and easy and tentative, and Rey’s breath stopped.

 

“C’mere, Rey,” Finn said after a few moments, sounding dazed and smug. “He’s even more beautiful close up,” and Rey laughed, and took the hand Poe held out to her and allowed herself to be pulled in.

 

There was electricity on the air, fizzing on Rey’s skin. Rey let it take her over.

 

 

They all missed dinner in the mess, and had to raid the kitchens for food to take back to their room, which was the moment Finn chose to get careful - or maybe it was just the moment he got worried. Rey wasn’t sure, and wasn’t risking touching his mind to check.

 

“Are you sure?” he asked Poe, though given the way Poe kept kissing him Rey thought he should have known the answer. “Are you - we don’t want you to -”

 

“We were going to wait,” Rey supplied, when Poe looked confused and Finn had run out of words (it was understandable: Poe had beautiful hands, broad-palmed with long, strong fingers, and he touched you with them like he might be venerating something). “As long as we needed to. For you to work out what you wanted.”

 

“I worked it out,” Poe said, and his face screwed up. “I worked it out - I think - a while ago? It just hit me, I knew what I wanted, and I didn’t know when I started, or - I was halfway through before I knew I started.” He fell silent, awkwardly for such a confident man; Rey felt affection wash over her, and didn’t know if it was hers or Finn’s or both. She ran one of her hands up Poe’s back and took a gentle grip on the nape of his neck, tilting his head back very lightly to kiss his throat and the point of his jaw. He leaned back into her touch with a small noise Rey wanted to hear more of, and that high flush burning on his cheeks again. Rey could get used to seeing it.

 

“I just didn’t,” Poe managed finally, obviously marshalling his remaining brain cells and making an effort, “I didn’t - know where to start, and what to say. And then you caught me, Finn, and I thought, if I don’t take this chance how long do I have to wait for another one, and will they still want me if I do?”

 

“We would,” Finn said confidently, pushing Poe back onto the mattress; Rey slid sideways to lie down next to him. “Promise.”

 

Rey’s stomach rumbled, and she grimaced. Both men laughed.

 

“Food,” Rey said, mortified, rubbing a hand across her face. She’d spent hours running repetitive exercises for Luke earlier, until she knew every one of the six advanced katas he’d taught her off by heart and could reproduce them halfway up a cliff, and apparently her body wanted her to be really clear that it was hungry. “Sorry.”

 

“Not with us,” Poe said, easy, smiling. “Don’t be sorry, Rey, we don’t care.”

 

“There are all kinds of things I could do -” Rey began, thinking with a sudden qualm of how she could hurt them, what she had it in her to do, if something went _really_ wrong - maybe she was the one who should have been shying away, not Poe -

 

“But you won’t,” Finn said, pulling her hand down from her face very gently and kissing her temple and the corner of her mouth, soft and familiar. Despite her worries, Rey relaxed. “Not that matters.”

 

“We know you,” Poe murmured, carefully pulling the ties out of her hair, taking the strain off her scalp. “Remember?”

 

Rey leaned back into him, and reached out to cup Finn’s cheek with one hand. He smiled at her. “I remember,” she said, softly.

 

 

Luke wore an extremely pained look on his face the next day.

 

“Shielding, Rey,” he said. “We’ve talked about this.”

 

“Sorry,” Rey said, unable to feel as embarrassed as she should or to get the silly grin off her face. “We’ll have to practise.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the C.S. Lewis reference...

"I haven't seen you for days," Kaydel said, tripping over Rey in the mess. They'd had a sudden influx of fighters, and a pair of mysterious travellers - one of whom closely resembled Jas the Besalisk, who had covertly waved at Rey with one arm that allowed Rey to glimpse the glint of a lightsaber's hilt under Jas's wrap - and there just wasn't enough room for everyone to have a seat and eat at peak meal times. This normally wasn't a problem, but for once Rey and Luke had stopped for lunch around the usual time, and while Luke had headed off to eat with General Organa, Rey had gone to the mess, hoping some of Black Squadron had returned from their latest mission. But the mess was heaving with people, and until Kaydel literally fell over her feet, Rey had seen no-one she knew well – nor did she think her chances of spotting anyone she knew well were particularly high.

 

"Sorry," Rey said, drawing her feet in. "Training's been a bit tough."

 

"And you don't always eat in here." Kaydel sat up, rubbing her shin.

 

Rey shrugged. Every now and then General Organa would eat in her office, and sometimes she would get Rey or Luke or both to join her. General Organa was always careful not to imply a closer relationship than Rey was strictly comfortable with - and having picked up little pieces of General Organa's own feelings about her family, Rey thought she knew why. Still, the General sometimes liked to talk about herself, or about Han, or to ask questions about Rey's life and share what she knew about the ongoing quest for Rey's parents. She would talk, sometimes, when it was just them, about the Force, and her use of it. She taught the same way Luke did, and Rey often took the morsels General Organa had let fall and spent long hours meditating on them. General Organa used the Force very differently to Luke; in some ways, more subtly.

 

Rey had asked if she knew anything about Finn, a week into Finn's absence. General Organa had shaken her head, and Rey had not asked again.

 

Kaydel was one of General Organa's favourite aides, but Rey didn't think she knew much about Rey's meals with General Organa. She didn't even think Kaydel had any idea that Rey was a Skywalker, of a sort; Rey still had no name in the official records, though this generally wasn't a problem, as there was only one of her and everyone knew who she was.

 

Kaydel raised fair eyebrows at Rey. "Not feeling talkative, are we?"

 

"Luke had me walk along a ridge line on my hands this morning," Rey said, swallowing a mouthful of curry. "That was his idea of a fun dawn activity."

 

Kaydel pulled a face. "Rather you than me. Is that any good?" She nodded at the curry, which tasted as if it had been made by the time-honoured method of throwing all available vegetables into a pot and simmering it to death.

 

“It’s a bit hot for me,” said Rey, who was eating it anyway.

 

Kaydel nodded and stood, then vanished into the crowd of people. Rey shifted in her seat on the floor, looked away from a very young commando she didn’t know who was staring at her like she might hold all the secrets of the universe, and turned her attention back to her meal.

 

After a minute, Kaydel battled her way back towards Rey, carrying a bowl of curry, a pair of pieces of flatbread balanced precariously on the bowl’s lip, and a spoon. Rey moved slightly to give her space, and Kaydel sat down next to her.

 

“How’s the Jedi training going?” she asked, ripping off a piece of flatbread and chewing it.

 

Rey shrugged, swallowed a large chunk of unidentified vegetable, and said “Good. So far as I can tell. How’s the war going?”

 

“Good,” Kaydel said, a precise mimic of Rey’s accent and intonation, “so far as I can tell.”  
  
Rey’s face scrunched up in a grin. “Heard from Finn?”

 

“Not lately.” Kaydel dipped some flatbread into her curry. “Which is good news, in this context.”  


“Thanks,” Rey said, scraping the bottom of her bowl.  “Nobody tells me and Poe anything.”

 

Kaydel shrugged. “Not about that, no. But then.” She nudged Rey’s shoulder, friendly, easy. “You don’t exactly talk about your Jedi training, flying off here and there, coming back with a new piece of the sky in your eyes every time.”

 

“Um,” Rey said, wondering how her various trips for the Resistance and trailing around Tatooine had been misinterpreted as super-secret Jedi training. Most of her training had taken place on Lah’mu, in full view of half the base, which was always very embarrassing when Rey failed at whatever Luke was telling her to do and fell on her arse. Not that that happened quite so often these days.

 

“Or maybe that’s just Finn and Poe.” Kaydel smiled slyly. “Nobody would blame you.”

 

Rey reddened, and applied herself to the remnants of her curry.

 

“Just teasing,” Kaydel said more gently, bumping Rey’s shoulder with her own again, and beginning to eat rapidly.

 

Rey nodded, but didn’t look at Kaydel. She wasn’t accustomed to people discussing her relationship with Finn and Poe, not to her face. Rey had fewer close friends among the Resistance than Finn and Poe did, partly because there were few people she worked with day to day, and partly because – while Rey liked people in general – she had learned Jakku’s lessons too well, and she preferred to keep a few people close. It had never occurred to her to want a large circle of friends. While she cared a great deal about Black Squadron, and about Kaydel, and General Calrissian, and a few of the mechanics she worked with often, and while she would fight for them tooth and nail, Rey could happily live with just Finn and Poe and Chewbacca and Luke and General Organa for company. That was enough for her. On Jakku, she had never had even that much.

 

Chewbacca was the only person who ever teased her about Finn and Poe. Luke sometimes made the odd straight-faced reference, and General Organa occasionally looked at them like she was worried – not, Rey thought, because she thought they were bad for each other, but because she was afraid of what might happen, if one of them was killed. But General Calrissian tended to look from the three of them to General Organa and smile sadly and say nothing, and Black Squadron ran the risk of being run ragged by Poe if any of them said anything, and Rey had never talked about them with Kaydel. It was strange to hear someone else acknowledge it; they were so much each other’s own star system. Planets, orbiting twenty-four crucial hours on Jakku.

 

“Credit for them,” Kaydel said.

 

Rey caught herself on a yawn, and said: “What?”

 

“Credit for them. What are you thinking?”

 

“Nothing,” Rey lied.

 

Kaydel twitched one pale eyebrow like she knew what Rey wasn’t saying, and let it go.

 

 

After lunch Rey went to find Luke. He liked wandering off to somewhere quiet, which meant that finding him was often a lesson in itself. Rey had worried about that, once, but a hesitant word to General Organa had rapidly established that General Organa could locate her brother anywhere, so long as he was in the same star system as her. So Luke wasn’t running off properly, and he wasn’t hiding from everyone; just her.

 

Rey located Luke on top of a roof, next to some defunct and overgrown solar panels. Rey couldn’t imagine which idiot had tried using solar panels on Lah’mu, but they were so old they were clouded over where vines didn’t cover them, and they did a good job of making the building look disused from the air.

 

As Rey hauled herself onto the roof, she saw a flash of an old-fashioned long leather duster disappearing on the other side. Rey narrowed her eyes at the spot where it had been, but didn’t investigate. Jas had been in the company of an unassuming Zabrak with spacer tattoos, and a heavy leather duster, like some spacers who never touched ground wore.

 

Luke’s eyes were closed, but Rey knew he knew she was there.

 

“I hope you got lunch.” Rey sat down next to him.

 

“Yes,” Luke said mildly, opening his eyes.

 

“I saw Jas in the mess.” Rey pushed her padawan braid behind her ear. “I mean, there were loads of people. But I definitely saw Jas. Hard to miss a Besalisk.”

 

“Quite,” Luke said.

 

“They were carrying a lightsaber. Not openly, and nobody else will have noticed in the crush. But I saw it.”

 

Luke was silent for a moment, and then said carefully: “Kylo Ren’s attack on the Second Temple left no survivors.”

 

Rey scratched the end of her nose, and thought about a Jedi Order. Thought about the number of people it might have accumulated, in fifteen years of growth, from half-grown padawans to comparatively experienced Jedi Knights. And the history Luke had given her to read about the Purges told her that some Jedi had escaped, even from the Temple in Coruscant  - though Rey found that hard to believe, given the visceral nature of the Temple’s destruction - and survived for a significant portion of the next twenty years. Some had even made it to the New Republic.

 

It made sense, she thought. That not quite everyone had been in Kylo Ren’s way to kill. Luke himself had not been present when the attack took place. Luke’s rebuilt Jedi Order, of course, would not have had the numbers of its predecessor, but they hadn’t fought alongside clones who were susceptible to mind control and could turn on them.

 

“You mean I didn’t have to go all the way to Ahch-To to find a teacher?” Rey said eventually, staring up at the lilac sky.

 

Luke smiled. “Leia didn’t send you to find a teacher,” he said. “If all that was necessary was for you to be taught, she could have done that herself. She sent you to find me.”

 

The corner of Rey’s mouth turned up, and she toyed idly with a piece of gravel from the roof. “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

 

“Some did not consider themselves Jedi,” Luke said. “Others were gravely injured – Kylo Ren struck at the Temple, but that was not the only blow that fell. We didn’t know they were related at the time, but I think we can be sure of it now. Some doubted my leadership as much as I did.” He fell silent for a moment, and Rey prodded him with a toe. He looked up, and smiled abstractedly at her. “It was best for us to scatter temporarily, while the magnitude of the threat could be judged – and when it was, we all had our own tasks to accomplish. The Force led us together; the Force drew us apart.”

 

“And common sense,” Rey said, “if they were as difficult to find as you were.”

 

Luke’s eyebrows twitched. “Not quite,” he said, and left it at that.

 

“I don’t understand this,” Rey said. “Only pieces of it.”  


“You think I understood more than pieces of the first war?” Luke enquired, and shook his head. “No. I knew enough about Rogue Squadron, I knew as much of the outline as anyone else of my middling rank, but I spent months training on Dagobah and trying to prise Han off Jabba’s wall. I was no Mon Mothma or Admiral Ackbar. I was a sword for one purpose; Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi forged me that way.” He paused again, staring out into the mountains. “They taught me how to destroy the Empire. They forgot to tell me how to build from what remained.”

 

Rey said nothing.

 

“Your task and mine is, as much as anything else, to survive,” Luke said. “And raise the Jedi again.” He heaved a sigh, and then shook his head suddenly, blue eyes snapping to sharpness. “We were discussing the code on fear, yesterday. I asked you to meditate on the causes and meaning of fear, and how and why it might lead you to the Dark Side.”

 

Rey started, and collected her scattered thoughts. All too many of them were focused on Finn, and the many things that might go wrong on a planet far away, with neither her nor Poe around to protect him – and Poe, and the many things that might go wrong in an X-wing, though Rey was more confident here, as she regularly checked Black One over herself. And some of them, probably more than Luke would quite like, were filtering through images of the people she had seen around the base, matching them up to the Force users she had occasionally sensed. None of them had spoken to her – not even Jas. It was as if as many of them were to remain secret as possible, until the last possible moment, which would certainly not be chosen by Rey.

 

Maybe one day the Jedi Order would reform, Rey thought. It was possible she might even be told about it, if that were the case.

 

  


Several weeks later - Finn still not back, and no sign of him - Rey found herself on Mustafar, sweltering in the heat from the volcanoes, and racing to beat Kylo Ren to some artefact of Darth Vader’s that had been hidden better than most. As a scavenger, Rey looked at the information brought to her by Intelligence and thought that the artefact probably didn’t exist. It made no sense for Darth Vader to have stashed a secret holocron in a shrine among the lava fields, and the way it was described was so incredibly melodramatic Rey had snorted aloud when she read it. She conceded that Kylo Ren was equally melodramatic and would probably fall straight for it, and had besides demonstrated very poor judgement when it came to his own safety, but she still had a mean, unjust thought that Finn wouldn’t have wasted her time with this.

 

When their ship landed, Luke peered out of the viewport with a jaundiced expression and suggested they leave Kylo Ren to it. “I can’t imagine my father will have anything to say to him other than ‘you idiot, you’ve squandered everything your family fought for, and repeated all my mistakes with none of my excuses’.”

 

Rey blinked, and thanked the Force that they’d come in the _Falcon_ , and the only person present to hear Luke vent - and identify Darth Vader as his father, a secret that remained unspoken for the General’s sake and carefully elided by admitting that Luke and Leia’s biological father had been Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi killed by Emperor Palpatine - was Chewbacca, who had heard it all before and cared about none of it.

 

True to form, Chewbacca merely yowled _Get out there, you grumpy old bastard; we agreed it was a trap for the cub._

 

Rey plucked at the material of her shirt. The _Falcon_ was well-equipped to resist the chill of space, but with the gangplank open after the landing she was already melting.

 

“We agreed it probably wasn't real,” she said, unsure whether she was trying to get Luke to declare the mission unnecessary, or simply remind him of their earlier deliberations.

 

“It’s exactly the kind of thing Snoke would do,” Luke agreed, and glared the kind of glare that made Rey feel Snoke would probably not survive an encounter with Luke. The set of his mouth was grim, his eyes cold and hard. “It’s exactly the kind of thing that worked on Ben before. As a boy.”

 

Rey said nothing, and applied herself to checking the fastenings on her heatproof boots. Along with the implausible things Intelligence had brought her, there had been a nugget of plausibility, and that was the rumour that the infighting inside the First Order was increasing - driven by Kylo Ren’s clashes with Armitage Hux, and Snoke’s cheerful little habit of playing them off against each other. But Snoke had supported Hux one too many times, probably because Hux was a far better general, and Kylo Ren had actively disobeyed him. Only once, and only in a small thing: he had refused to destroy some Jedi relics. Rumour said that he hadn’t been seen for several months after that, and Intelligence had actually begun to hope he’d been disposed of, but he had returned to his master’s side limping.

 

Rey knew from personal experience that Ren had little regard for his own pain or safety. She wondered, as Luke did, if the holocron was a plant, a fake, designed to draw Kylo Ren back to his master’s side for good. There was little to no chance of him ever returning to the Light side, but it was easy to imagine him breaking from the First Order, at least to some degree.

 

She folded her arms. “Of course,” she said, “it could just as easily be a trap for us.”

 

Luke sighed, and led her out onto the planet’s surface.

 

Mustafar was grim. Rey endured it in silence; the half-toxic air, noticeably harder to breathe, the burning ground which shifted under her feet and obliged her to spread her Force-senses out around her, looking for plates that would remain solid, instead of sliding and tipping her into lava. Finding somewhere to land the _Falcon_ had been a nightmare, but simply walking on the planet’s surface was worse. You couldn’t just look at a series of instruments, pick somewhere, and call it a day. You had to live with the oppressive heat closing in on your head, and the sweat pouring off you. Rey sipped at her water near-constantly, and knew she would dehydrate.

 

Luke was consulting the instructions they’d been given and a locator, grumbling under his breath as instrument and instructions failed to match up perfectly. Rey turned to stand at his back, watching for Knights of Ren. Mustafar’s surface was mostly black rock, punctuated by sudden bursts of lava, and the two of them would stand out sharply even dressed in browns and greys. The Knights of Ren, by comparison, favoured a motley black that formed sort of a dreadful uniform by being so individual, no two quite alike or equipped alike. They would not stand out, and some of them were good enough at shielding the roiling sickness of their Force-signatures to give Rey a surprise.

 

They found their way to the shrine all right; tiny, rock-carved, and close to the lava, they had to leap over stepping stones to reach it. Rey swore inside her head all the way across, and - when she arrived - crowded close behind Luke out of curiosity.

 

“I can’t tell if this is real or not,” Luke said aloud, over the cauldron of the lava. “I’ve been to Mustafar before and not seen it, but…”

 

“It’s not exactly handy, is it?” Rey said, glancing back over her shoulder at the distant shadow of Darth Vader’s ruined castle.

 

Luke shrugged. “It’s not booby-trapped,” he said, examining the shrine carefully. There was a small, sickly gleaming metallic cube on a rough-cut rock shelf; there were a few enigmatic symbols carved around it, but they weren’t letters Rey recognised. She asked what they were.

 

“They’re… well, specific markings, from Tatooine, with a specific meaning.” Luke brushed his fingers over them. “I recognise them, but I’m not sure I can recall their meanings. My aunt Beru would have known. Either the shrine itself is not fake, or Snoke has a worryingly deep knowledge of where Anakin Skywalker came from.”

 

“He’s got Kylo Ren.”

 

Luke shook his head. “We didn’t teach Ben much about Tatooine. As I told you - he didn’t so much lack the interest as the aptitude. He found the conditions difficult.” He fell silent. “Ben never matured enough to ask to pursue that interest anyway.”

 

Rey said nothing.

 

“As I said,” Luke continued, audibly changing the subject, “it’s not trapped.” He reached out and took the little metal cube, and dropped it into a suitable pocket. Rey probed at it with the Force, very cautiously; it felt Dark, but not malicious, and it didn’t feel as if it had free will.

 

“Do you want to know what it says?” she asked.

 

Luke held it up, and pressed a segment of cube that seemed no different to any other.

 

“Grandson,” said a hissing, croaking voice. There was no image, no sign of the personhood Rey now knew to expect from holocrons.

 

They listened to it for a few moments, as someone purporting to be Darth Vader ranted about the greatness of the Dark side, and the fact that Kylo Ren was heir to it and must draw his disobedient relatives to his side.

 

“That will be you,” Luke said to Rey, stopping what was obviously a recording. “Well, you and my sister.”

 

“What else is new?” Rey said, and took the cube from Luke, turning it over in her fingers. It was about the size of her palm and cold to the touch despite the ambient heat. “Do we destroy it?” She motioned at the lava.

 

He sighed. “I really don’t think it will make a material difference. But probably, yes. We may sow some discord among the First Order’s ranks that way, and while Kylo Ren’s fixation on you and Leia is not dependent on Snoke’s encouragement, Snoke’s encouragement is… undesirable.”

 

Rey looked down at it in her hand. “So, just chuck it?”

 

“That would probably be the simplest way of doing it,” Luke agreed, and Rey tossed it underarm into the lava.

 

There was a very loud bang as it hit the surface, and a scream - in the same croaking voice - of “Avenge me!” Rey and Luke both started and almost leapt sideways off the narrow ledge the alcove was on, and - somewhere rather closer than ideal - an answering roar of rage echoed off the spars of black rock.

 

“Oops,” said Luke, drawing his lightsaber.

 

“That’s all you can say?” Rey demanded, drawing hers. “‘Oops’?”

 

“Well, what else would you suggest?”

 

They hurried over the stepping stones, and started to make their way back to the Falcon as quickly as possible. Rey could sense Kylo Ren now, though the geology - or perhaps the atmosphere, or perhaps the persistent scent of Sith-like decay from the castle - was making it harder to pick up on or pinpoint his location.

 

Luke stumbled on a rock. Rey grabbed him, and saw him wince when he put his foot down again.

 

“Ankle,” he said, sounding aggrieved, and forced himself on. Rey’s hands were slick with sweat, but she managed to grab and twist the back of his robe, providing him with some support to stay upright. They limped on, slowed a little by Luke’s injury, and then Kylo Ren and several other Force presences, formerly shielded by the gaping wound in the Force that was Ren, suddenly came clear in Rey’s Force-senses and she hissed.

 

 _Let go of me_ , Luke said immediately.

 

Rey did so. _Let me take Kylo Ren. With your ankle_ -

 

 _Done_ , Luke answered. _Don’t get overconfident._ He set his back to the nearest high, jagged outcrop, so that Rey wouldn’t have to worry about watching his back, and Rey heard him sending a quiet message to Chewbacca very dimly. All of her was focused on Kylo Ren coming closer. She could hear his footsteps now.

 

Rey raised her lightsaber.

 

Kylo Ren rounded the corner of the gully they were in. A trap, Rey thought, but there were no life signs and no sounds of droid movement on the rocks above. Kylo Ren hadn’t planned an ambush. He seldom thought ahead like that.

 

His lightsaber was crackling, and so was his temper. Rey could feel it roiling as fiercely as the lava.

 

“Cousin,” he said, his deep voice cracking and spitting with rage even through his mask. “You get more insolent every time we meet. Destroying Darth Vader’s holocron was a crime.”

 

“It wasn’t a holocron,” Rey said before Luke could, hoping to keep Kylo Ren’s attention on her for the moment. “It was a recording.”

 

“You should know better. Supreme Leader Snoke-”

 

“Supreme Leader Snoke never had the pleasure of meeting my father,” Luke said. His voice was cold and hard and angry, and Rey only realised how well his Force presence had been hidden when it burst in on her like an unexpected sun, burning viciously.

 

“ _You_ ,” Kylo Ren said, almost soft in the depths of his rage, and before he could storm past to get at Luke Rey leapt forward so that her lightsaber clashed with his.

 

“You’ll have to go through me,” she snarled.

 

“Loyalty -” Kylo Ren began, but Rey danced out of the way and pulled her lightsaber with her, forcing him to overbalance and then bearing down on him, making him scramble to get out of her lightsaber’s path. Rey heard high, tortured wails and knew that the other Knights of Ren had sneaked round and joined the battle; a quick glance almost cost her an ear, but told her that Luke had engaged them, back now pressed against a high thin spar in the middle of the gully, and that the Knights were wary of him.

 

Rey concentrated on Kylo Ren.

 

He was dressed more heavily than she was, but even so, it was possible to discern that he was thinner; the man Rey had met on Starkiller and fought before a city gate had been a broadsword of a human being, but this Kylo looked as if his clothes hung on him, and moved with more jerkiness than Rey expected. He was still a formidable opponent, but it was obvious that their disagreement had been fundamental enough that Snoke had damaged him.

 

Rey felt the distant sympathy she might have expended on a pick-vulture’s skeleton, and pressed her advantage. She forced him to back up almost to the corner, and then kept him there, unwilling to part from Luke too much, or to risk losing Chewbacca in this landscape of fire and stone.

 

He was fighting like a desperate man, taking risks that some part of Rey found vaguely surprising. He had always been a careless fighter, but there was a frantic twist to the way he moved now that made her wonder. And while he had never stopped informing her that she needed a teacher and would benefit from the Dark side, like some sort of extremely violent salesman, there was an urgent edge to his talk now - and he wouldn’t stop, no matter how Rey pressed him, so that he should have had no breath to speak with.

 

“You can’t even begin to imagine, Rey,” he said, after Rey had just made a determined attempt to hack off his left arm, which had taken a slice from the meat of his shoulder. “The power of it -“”

 

“I know what the Dark side can do.” Rey swept her lightsaber in an arc to cut his feet from under him, then stabbed at his defence, always weaker than his attack, while he tried to gather himself. “I’m not interested. When will you understand that you can’t –” jab - “fucking -” slash - “ _have_ me?”

 

“Wisdom will come to you,” he said. There was blood dripping from his shoulder; she must have crushed part of his armour into the wound somehow. “You and my mother. You are Darth Vader’s heirs, as much as I - you could do _so much_ -”

 

Rey caught up her anger and released it into the Force, privately marvelling at how practised she’d got at doing that - maybe she’d spent too much time fighting - and then redoubled her attack. She had almost pushed Kylo back beyond the corner before two things happened at once: firstly, she remembered that she had specifically planned not to do such a thing, and secondly, Chewbacca arrived in the Falcon and brought a large chunk of the gully’s jagged edges down on Luke’s opponents, forcing Luke to leap backwards and shield himself, and squashing three Knights of Ren beneath the wreckage.

 

Kylo Ren howled.

 

“Oh,” Rey said, “did that hurt?” and was rewarded by a violent sweep of the red lightsaber that forced her onto her back foot and tripped her backwards over the uneven ground; by the time she caught her balance, Kylo Ren had gone.

 

 _I can see him_ , Chewbacca growled over the commlink around Rey’s neck.

 

“Let him go,” Luke said, sounding very old. “You’ll never hit a single person without a dedicated gunner, and we need to get out of here before he summons reinforcements. Rey, what did I tell you about getting overconfident?”

 

Rey grimaced. Her side felt burned where she’d crashed against a wall to catch herself, and a lot of muscles were yowling in protest at her cavalier treatment. “Sorry,” she said, and meant it.

 

Luke shook his head slightly. “Never mind.”

 

The Falcon settled and landed nearby, with a slight groan as it hit the thin crust. Rey winced, even though she knew Chewbacca must have used the scanners to check the ground could hold the craft before landing.

 

“Come on,” she said, holding out an arm to Luke. “Let’s go.”

 

 

“I’ll do better next time,” Rey said, when they were in hyperspace, taking a convoluted route back to a Resistance waystation on Dantooine to make sure they weren’t followed. Luke had been very quiet as she strapped up his ankle and he helped her attend to her various minor injuries, and she was worried. Chewbacca assured her that Luke was merely sulking - and Chewbacca told Rey that he had nearly forty years’ detailed knowledge of the subject so a mere cub like her could just fucking trust him - but there was a strange quality to Luke’s presence in the Force, an edge of grief and resentment and the anger that was always with him when he thought of Kylo Ren.

 

Luke dropped a dejarik piece he’d been toying with, startled. “What? No, Rey. It’s not that.”

 

Rey sat down on the opposite side of the game table from him and waited.

 

“I…” Luke sighed. “You have to understand. As a child, Ben was very troubled, but - promising. He could be strange and difficult, but there was a genuinely gifted Jedi in there. Everyone had great hopes for him.” He paused. “Perhaps too many great hopes.”

 

Rey said nothing.

 

“Seeing the pair of you fighting,” Luke said slowly, “I wondered what it would have been like, to see you two fight on the same side.”

 

Rey thought that Kylo Ren wondered that too, but again she said nothing.

 

“It’s useless,” Luke said, slapping his hands lightly on the table and making the images shiver. “Turning over the past like this.”

 

Rey struggled for some words that might help, and came up with nothing other than one of the desert woman’s old maxims. “No-one is ever allowed to know what might have been,” she said, and the words felt right in her mouth.

 

Luke froze almost imperceptibly, and stayed like that for a long moment. Then he straightened a little, and his head tilted in interest. “One of your counsellor’s sayings?”

 

Rey nodded.

 

“Have you seen her lately?”

 

Rey shook her head. “Not for a while. I’ve only seen her - maybe once or twice a year - since I was fourteen.”

 

“Hmm,” Luke said, and tapped his fingers on the table. “I’d be _very_ interested to know who she is.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is loved and appreciated.

 

Rey got her next breakthrough from a trip to Chandrila. It wasn’t intended to have any relation to her search for her family – it was as much about being seen as Luke’s padawan as anything else – but Rey had remembered that she had last trailed Merel Skywalker to Chandrila, and had asked permission to continue her research while she was there that was readily granted. That put Rey in a good mood, but she thought she would have liked Chandrila anyway: it felt to her like Coruscant should have done, more genuine and less superficial, and she didn’t have to pretend to be enthusiastic or upbeat about anything she didn’t feel enthusiastic or upbeat about. She managed to get out of four separate diplomatic receptions by pleading Jedi business, and the fifth wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as she had a ready-made excuse for sticking closely to Luke’s side and listening attentively to him instead of making conversation. It was even harder to talk to strangers here than it was on Lah’mu; on Lah’mu, fewer people had an agenda, and everyone knew better than to try to force her to talk. Rey had little conversational trouble, though, because Luke stuck as closely to her as she did to him. She did receive one offer of marriage when Luke was on the other side of the room talking to Niniane Mothma very seriously about her famous aunt, which was desperately awkward, but she responded to it by stepping directly backwards into Poe’s orbit, and the supplicant looked at her, looked at Poe – frowning like a stormcloud at Rey’s evident confusion – and made his apologies.

 

“It was probably a joke,” Rey said weakly. “You look very smart in your uniform. I hate this dress.”

 

“My shoes pinch,” Poe said, pouring a shot of Black Squadron moonshine from a hipflask concealed on his person into her drink. “I like that colour on you.”

 

“Thank you,” Rey said, taking an overly large gulp of her adulterated drink and coughing. “There are a lot of people staring.”

 

“No, _really_?” Poe said, with a mock innocence he must have picked up from Finn, who occasionally played it up when he was especially cross about something but didn’t feel he could shout.

 

Rey was silent for a moment. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be good at this,” she confessed, jerking her head at the crowds of people in the high-ceilinged room, decorated with strategically placed bits of gilt and flowers like nothing Rey had ever seen before.

 

Poe nudged her with his shoulder. “Look, there are friends of mine here from when I used to be in the Republic Navy. Let’s go and find some easier company.”

 

They eventually found Poe’s friends conducting a surreptitious sabacc game behind an enormous display of flowers. Rey and Poe were dealt in, and in moments, Rey was feeling better.

 

They passed the would-be fiancé on the way out, just as Poe was tucking a flower Rey had picked up and admired behind her ear.

 

“I should have known,” muttered the would-be fiancé.

 

Rey looked at Poe through the corner of her eye, wondering how he’d respond to this.

 

“Damn right,” Poe said, without missing a beat, and Rey grinned.

 

She got Chewbacca to take a holo of the pair of them, and sent it to Kaydel Ko Connix, asking her to get it to Finn.

 

“I miss him,” Poe said, when she told him what she’d done. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and the collar of his dress jacket loose, a couple of black curls falling forward into his face.

 

“Me too,” Rey admitted, palming the door to her unnecessarily fancy suite open. It was very late, and she knew Poe would prefer to sleep in his own room, but if that hadn’t been the case she would have asked him in; the suite was too large and unfamiliar for her to sleep comfortably in, the bizarre opulence of the space setting her on edge. She missed the glow of the night crystal, and the sound of Poe and Finn breathing.

 

“He’ll be fine,” Poe murmured, as much to himself as anything else, and then shook his head and blinked. “Listen to me, talking to myself.”  


Rey smiled.

 

“Hey, will you send me a copy of that holo? My dad would like one.”

 

Rey blinked at him. “Your father knows about me?”

 

Poe rolled his eyes at her. “He knows about both of you. If you think I somehow didn’t mention the brilliant defector and the pilot Jedi I’ve been rooming with –”

 

“Okay, okay.” Rey stifled her giggle. “Fair enough.”

 

An affectionate half-smile curled at Poe’s mouth, and he kissed her forehead. “Night, Rey.”

 

She hugged him, pressing her face into his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her waist and squeezed tight for a second.

 

“Sleep well,” she said, wishing she had half the belief of the people who thought that every word out of her mouth was some kind of blessing. Poe had distinct shadows under his eyes, had done since Finn had left, and she worried about that.

 

 

“You and Dameron are all over the holonews,” General Organa said to Rey over breakfast, floating the marmalade in Rey’s direction instead of setting down her datapad to pass it. Apparently the news was that engrossing. Either that, or she was reading two reports and four different news sources at once again.

 

“Uh,” Rey said, taking the marmalade out of the air and spreading her toast liberally with it. Chandrilan bread was weird, but not the weirdest thing she’d ever eaten, and it went nicely with the distinctive tang of the marmalade. “Why?”

 

“Because you’re a very pretty shiny new hope of the Jedi and he’s a very handsome war hero, and you told someone he was your fiancé last night,” General Organa said, looking at Rey over the tops of her reading glasses.

 

Luke sneezed caf.

 

“Luke, you absolute nerf-herder, that is _disgusting_.”

 

“I did not,” Rey said defensively. “I… someone asked me to marry him, and I said no, and Poe backed me up. We didn’t even _say_ anything.”

 

“That sounds more like it,” Luke said, mopping up the spilt caf. “I didn’t think the three of you were quite so serious.”

 

“All three of them share a room,” General Organa said, looking across at Luke. “According to Lando.”

 

Rey flushed, and lowered the slice of toast she’d been about to take a bite of. “Are you all putting bets on us, as well as my sparring matches?”

 

“Well, I’m not,” General Organa said, pushing her glasses up to the bridge of her nose and reapplying herself to her datapad. “Lando might be.”

 

Rey looked down at her toast, still hovering in her hand, poised for eating, and started eating it, chewing slowly as she thought.

 

“If it bothers any of you, he’ll stop,” General Organa said, almost casually, as if she wasn’t paying any attention.

  
Rey nodded.

 

“Mind the press on your way to Customs,” Luke said, pouring himself another cup of caf.

 

Rey closed her eyes in horror, and Luke smirked.

 

 

The governmental buildings in Hanna City were connected by a metro rail: very shiny, very new, very easy to follow. Rey left her hair loose and pinned her padawan braid back under its fall so it wasn’t easily visible, hid her lightsaber, and dressed as inconspicuously as she could manage, in a plain slate blue suit trimmed with stripes of cream and bronze at the wrists, neck, waist and ankles - the one she had been told to wear to daytime official events where Jedi attire wasn’t appropriate, which she had mostly avoided. She still stood out; everyone who seemed to be roughly her chronological age, regardless of their species, looked well-scrubbed and extremely young for their age, and most of them were following senior staff around while Rey was alone. But it wasn’t quite as bad, and without the makeup, uncomfortable dress and elaborate hairstyle of the previous night, there were few obvious signs of recognition in anyone’s eyes or Force presences. Someone did temporarily get very excited, as she got off her metro cab, about the presence of _that Jedi, the young one_ , but since they said nothing aloud and Rey was leaving Rey felt comfortable smiling in their general direction as she made her escape.

 

The Customs House, which regulated interplanetary trade with Chandrila and maintained relevant records for a hundred years before turning them over to the Knowledge Centre on the other side of the planet, was not hugely imposing. Yes, it was large, with high ceilings and enormous mosaics in the entrance hall depicting Chandrila’s centuries of successful trade, and the central desk where several people sat waiting to receive enquiries was made of some kind of polished wood that shone almost gold. But there was something faintly unreal about it, and when Rey walked over to the desk the receptionists looked down their noses at her as if nothing she had to say could be of interest.

 

Rey preferred Mos Espa.

 

“My name’s Rey,” Rey said, addressing one receptionist in particular. “I have an appointment with your librarians. In five minutes.”

 

The receptionist she had spoken to remained snooty, but he at least gave Rey directions to the library.

 

Waiting for the lift doors to open, Rey heard the words “…never believed in the Force myself; it’s all tricks and rubbish. And she hasn’t even _done_ anything” float on the air. The skin between her shoulder blades tightened like she was being watched, and she hurried into the lift. Why did people have to _care_ so much? And why did they think they knew everything about her, from the one-word description ‘Jedi’ and a couple of exaggerated holonews reports? True, Rey hadn’t blown up a Death Star; she was a bit short on public accomplishments like that. But she wasn’t worthless just because they didn’t know what she was worth.

 

The librarians were kinder, and – while plainly very curious – the senior deputy who helped Rey locate records for the _Clarity_ , registered to Olimar in the Ileenium system, didn’t ask questions Rey would have had to fend off somehow. Rey eyed the hundreds of results that turned up, denoting multiple visits to different parts of Chandrila over a long period of time, and took a deep breath. She got out her datapad and settled in.

 

There wasn’t much that was useful. She found a few more ports that _Clarity_ regularly stopped at, noted the increasing profitability of the shipments by the increased tax her captain paid, and determined that Merel Skywalker was a consistent presence onboard. The captain changed twice, the rest of the crew shifted about, but apart from one absence of about two years and another, three-year-long sabbatical, Merel Skywalker remained the navigator until she was in her late thirties. By which time she had a young female relative called Tillira with her, listed on the crew manifest as a travelling dependent. There were no further details, holos or ident-docs referencing crew members, only names and occupations; Rey didn’t have the clearance to demand a picture of Tillira, or check her age, but still. Tillira used the same surname as Merel, and where crew members were spouses, or had spouses with them, they were not listed as dependents. So Tillira wasn’t Merel’s wife. And there were no Skywalkers missing from Tatooine, so Tillira was most likely a daughter, possibly a blood relation, possibly adopted – Rey didn’t know how Force affinities might work between adopted members of families, and didn’t mean to speculate right now - but either way, a daughter.

 

Rey’s breath came jerkily for a second, and she controlled it. She scrolled painstakingly back through the earlier results, checking each crew manifest. Tillira Skywalker first appeared after Merel Skywalker’s two-year absence, and stayed with the ship until Merel Skywalker left. Rey searched her name instead of Merel’s; sure enough, further results came up, listing Tillira four times with the _Clarity_ and twenty with other ships. Rey made a note of all the ships’ names, and then checked their details and crew manifests. Most of the ships were registered to the same planet in the Ileenium system that the _Clarity_ had been; maybe Tillira had thought of herself as being from Olimar. In the back of her mind, Rey was calculating Tillira’s likely age; if she’d been born during that two-year absence, Merel would have been around in her late twenties at the time, and Tillira would have been maybe five or six years older than Luke and General Organa. Tillira could be Rey’s mother, if Rey had been a comparatively late child, like Merel herself…

 

Rey’s eye caught on the words _travelling dependent_ , and she accidentally skipped six entries as her fingers jerked on the touchscreen. Hands shaking, heart pounding, she scrolled back and checked the date on the entry when she thought she’d got back to it. It was nineteen years old; Rey would have been little more than a baby. Rey highlighted the relevant point in her datapad notes, selected the entry, and returned to its crew manifest, scrolling carefully through it.

_Rey Skywalker, travelling dependent._

 

Rey stared at the screen, her jaw dropping helplessly, and then – suddenly, quite without warning – she began to cry.

 

For the first time since Unkar Plutt had taken hold of her five-year-old hand, Rey knew her mother’s name.

 

 

She managed to wipe her eyes and compose herself fairly soon, knowing that someone would probably come along to check on her shortly. But her hands still trembled as she combed painstakingly through the remaining entries, looking for her first childhood appearance, mapping Tillira’s career the way she had mapped Merel’s. This must be incomplete, of course; neither the _Clarity_ nor any of the five other ships Tillira had served on in various capacities – deckhand, secondary cartographer, co-pilot, first mate – could have traded solely with Chandrila. But it was a start. Rey copied everything she could find that might be relevant, and searched for her own newly confirmed first and last name in case she appeared on a passenger manifest or something similar. There was nothing else.

 

Rey sat staring at the screen for a bit, then wiped her search history and logged herself off. She copied the data from her datapad onto a secondary datastick and tucked it inside her shirt for safekeeping, then left her carrel and went quietly to the fresher. Nobody spared her a second glance, and her face in the mirror looked comparatively normal. Rey relieved herself, washed her hands and splashed a little cold water on her face, hoping to bring down the slight puffiness of her eyes, and then left, thanking the librarians on the way out.

 

She got more attention on the way back to the lodgings she had been given, connecting with Luke and General Organa’s and an irritating distance from Poe’s. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the same building. Rey stared out of the window and tried to look bland and calm and like nothing was happening; she toyed with her shields, deliberately building them up and then letting them ebb a little, focusing on something for the sake of focusing on it. She tried not to fidget, or to let her turmoil show on her face. She’d had a lot of practice forming bland, unreadable expressions on Jakku; if knowledge was currency, that included others’ knowledge of your own feelings.

 

But people taking holos of her like they thought they were being subtle was a bit much. Rey almost wished they were afraid of her, like they were of Luke. The silence that his arrival spread through a roomful of strangers who had never seen him tinkering with an X-wing or burning his fingers on Artoo’s circuits was really something to hear. And to see, too; they scattered before him like grains of sand on the breeze.

 

Rey kept her head up and her eyes focused somewhere else. In her bra, the datastick with a secondary copy of her precious proof burned.

 

Neither General Organa or Luke was in the suite when Rey reached it, walking with unhurried calm. Rey commed Kaydel Ko Connix and found her gossiping with a couple of senatorial aides; Kaydel gave Rey a rapid run-down of General Organa’s schedule and explained that Luke was with General Organa at present, escorting her to a luncheon, and neither would be back for two hours. Rey thanked Kaydel, and left a message that she’d found something during her research and looked forward to seeing General Organa and Luke on her return. Then she boosted herself up onto the glossy table and sat there for several moments, thinking.

 

 _Knowledge is currency._ The Chandrilans were deeply sympathetic to the Resistance, and had a kinder thought for General Organa than much of the galaxy did. Rey understood from Kaydel, who had a keen grasp of every bit of galactic rumour going, that Chandrila had a strong tradition of adoption and mentorship, and General Organa was considered the sainted Mon Mothma’s heiress in some senses. Some people had even been surprised that there was no formal arrangement made. Thirty years ago, when the Empire fell, there had been talk that Mon Mothma would formally adopt General Organa and General Organa would enter Chandrilan politics. Yes, the Chandrilans were very positive about the Resistance.

 

Nonetheless, Rey thought, absently snacking on a piece of fruit, they were afraid. The First Order was not what the Empire had been, but the war was a real and present threat, and the Skywalker twins were – like all swords – double-edged. The Chandrilans would want to know their thoughts and plans. There would be a great deal of value in any unguarded words let loose in this suite. It was almost certainly thoroughly bugged, and while Rey was good with machinery, she had no experience of spycraft beyond that one, never-repeated trip to Coruscant.

 

Rey chewed carefully around the hexagonal core of the fruit. She didn’t know what General Organa was planning; she knew only a little of Luke’s thoughts. She was very sure, however, that the proof of her parentage would be extremely valuable. It was possible that someone at the Customs building would be able to retrieve the information she’d found, even though she’d wiped the history. But that didn’t mean she should make it easy for the Chandrilans. And while she could speak to Luke and General Organa through the Force, in a way no bug could pick up on, there was someone else she wanted to tell – and he wouldn’t hear her if she spoke that way.

 

Besides. She had two hours that she needed to fill. Rey could feel an uneasy electricity in her blood; she was still a little light-headed, on edge and shivering with it. She knew nothing about Tillira but her name and the ships she’d served on, and the knowledge still seemed too much for her.

 

Rey pushed herself off the table, chucked the core into a discreet waste chute, and went to change into something more practical. Odds on, Poe was to be found wherever the nearest X-wing was.

 

BB-8 could keep her second datastick for her, Rey thought. And maybe she could encrypt a transmission for Finn, as well. She grimaced at herself in the mirror hung on the wall; every time she thought of Finn, alone, without either of them to look after him, worry clutched at her heart with cold hands.

 

He would be excited for her, she thought; he would be pleased. He would help her find out more. He was good at finding out things.

 

It would have been inappropriate to carry a blaster in Hanna City. So when Rey cinched the blue shell-decorated belt that had been Finn’s gift around her waist, she left the holster off.

 

 

Poe was giving a talk when Rey found him. She slipped into the back of the small lecture theatre and took a seat; he didn’t notice her immediately, too busy discussing tactics and manoeuvres and training methods used by the Resistance, and ways they hoped to improve them. The officers in the room were hanging on his every word, which – as far as Rey was concerned – was as it should be. She listened carefully, struck again by the truth of the first personal description Finn had ever given her of Poe – _he’s a hell of a pilot_. He was good. Better than she would have been, without the Force behind her. Tapping her fingers soundlessly on the desk, she watched Poe and imagined him in his X-wing streaking across the lake at Takodana, the way Finn had described it to her.

 

Eventually, he wrapped the lecture up and took questions. Rey listened closely to these, too, and made a note of the thoughts revealed between the lines. A lesson of General Organa’s, that, not one of Luke’s, and one that deserved practising. It was currently telling her that the remnants of the Republic had overestimated the Resistance’s firepower and underestimated their tactical skill. It was also telling her that there were a few people in the room who remained hostile to the Resistance, as if their defiance had somehow made the First Order build Starkiller and set fire to the Hosnian System.

 

Rey thought she knew the First Order well enough to be confident that that was rubbish. She waited until Poe had managed to give a polite answer, and then raised her hand to ask a technical question about systems compatibility between X-wings and the more recent A-series interceptors before the officer who had asked the original, offensive question could do more than open his mouth for a second volley. There was a rustle, and a lot of heads turned. Rey tried not to blush and kept her eyes on Poe, who was grinning at her like she was Finn come again to rescue him from his cell on the _Finalizer_.

 

Poe cleared his throat, and gave an equally technical response to her question, which inspired an officer hardly older than Rey to ask something related, and before long Rey was able to sit back and listen to people who knew as least as much as she did about starship technology talk knowledgeably about their area of expertise. She almost wished for a datapad to record it; she was reading with increasing fluency, but her writing was still clumsy and poor.

 

There were no more questions that blamed the Resistance for everyone’s suffering. There were also a lot of eyes on her. Rey curled one hand into a fist under the table where no-one could see, and took a deep, calming breath. She was here for a reason.

 

When the lecture theatre emptied out, Rey went down the stairs to meet Poe. He was still in a little knot of people talking, but BB-8 rolled up to her and whistled a foul-mouthed demand to know why she hadn’t told them she was coming.

 

“Spur-of-the-moment decision,” Rey whistled back, and added a request that BB-8 should look after something for her. The little droid took in the datastick, and Rey straightened up just as the crowd thinned out and Poe came over.

 

“I thought you were stuck with your research,” he said, smiling warmly at her.

 

She smiled back, helpless, instinctive, and felt her jitters return as she remembered why she had come here. “I unstuck myself.” She glanced at the few people still lingering. “Can I have a word? Jedi business.”

 

“Mysterious.” Poe waggled his eyebrows at her, and Rey felt laughter bubble up inside herself. “Whatever you like. I can take some time. Although I think there’s someone who would like to meet you.”

 

He nodded over his shoulder, and Rey looked in the direction he indicated. The officer dawdling just too close to be uninterested was the same one who had asked a technical question after Rey had blasted open the field for them; a woman maybe five years older than Rey, with an honest face and a long nose, black brows slightly drawn together, brown skin contrasting with the deep blue of her almost painfully immaculate uniform. She wasn’t fidgeting, but she was doing it so obviously that she might as well have been bouncing on her toes and twisting her fingers.

 

Rey remembered Poe saying, on Tashel Quartus, that she and Finn should think more about people their own age. This girl would be Finn’s age, a little older than Rey herself, and Rey felt like a grandmother next to her. She looked at Poe with slightly raised eyebrows, and wondered if the chagrined expression that flitted across his face meant he recognised the idiocy of his earlier statement. Probably not.

 

“Happy to be introduced,” Rey said.

 

The girl came forward. “Lieutenant Armalen,” she said, “Chandra Armalen,” and tried to shake hands.

 

Rey had had to be introduced to shaking hands as a concept and still saw little point in it, but she shook hands anyway. Chandra; that was a very common Chandrilan name, a play on the name of the central sun itself. “Nice to meet you,” Rey said. “Rey.” _Rey Skywalker_ , she thought.

 

“I know,” Lieutenant Armalen blurted. “I – didn’t know Jedi knew anything about mechanics.” She hesitated. “My sibling didn’t.”

 

“It’s very difficult to get Luke – Jedi Skywalker, I mean – out of a ship once you’ve got him into one,” Rey said carefully. “And I grew up… working in salvage.” She’d agreed with General Organa that she wouldn’t tell the full truth about where she came from. And anyway, the few people outside the Resistance who had heard the story of the scavenger Jedi were inevitably shocked and disturbed by her childhood. “Your sibling was a Jedi?”

 

Lieutenant Armalen nodded. “For a while. They died at… the temple. Jedi Skywalker’s New Jedi Order.”

 

Rey was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.

 

“It was Kylo Ren,” Lieutenant Armalen volunteered unexpectedly. “Jedi Skywalker said that from the marks left behind, he killed Oli personally.”

 

Poe tensed behind Rey.

 

“Well,” Rey said. “The second time I met him, I cut half Kylo Ren’s face off.”

 

Lieutenant Armalen smiled like one of those leaping predators on Tashel Quartus. “Good.” She looked down, and rubbed her thumb over the two tattooed dots on her left little finger. “May the Force be with you.”

 

“And also with you.”

 

Lieutenant Armalen looked up, and the smile was still on her face. “I had to stay on Chandrila before for my father’s sake. But do you think it’s still defecting if the Republic and the Resistance are going to be one and the same?”

 

 

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Rey said, ten minutes later, walking along the edge of one of the dockyards with Poe; Lieutenant Armalen had given them the codes to get in to see the interceptors, and Rey for one was fascinated. She would be late back to see General Organa and Luke, but that couldn’t be helped.

 

“Me neither. She didn’t seem like the type.” Poe stretched, and let his arms drop to link his hands comfortably behind his back as he walked. “But she is a galaxy-class slicer, and very good with an onboard computer, so we could definitely use her. Nice one, Rey, I think you sealed the deal.”

 

Rey’s mouth twitched. “I’m not Finn.” Finn collected defectors and recruits of all stripes like ducklings; the only downside was that they tended to have very limited notions of who they answered to, and the only people they could all be guaranteed to answer to were General Organa and Finn himself.

 

“Nobody is. Heard from him?” Poe’s voice was deceptively casual. “I thought there had to be a reason you came looking for me. BB-8! Leave that astromech alone, it’s busy.”

 

BB-8 bleeped plaintively that she would do as she liked. Poe rolled his eyes.

 

“No,” Rey said. “Not since last week. No. I… found something, in my research.”  


“Oh yeah?” Poe was still casual, but Rey could hear the tension in him. “Anything new?”

 

Rey swallowed, and her eyes flickered around the dockyard. It was busy and noisy, and nobody was coming close. If they kept walking, no-one would be suspicious at all, and no-one would be able to get close enough to hear them without appearing suspicious. “I know what my mother’s name was.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Poe repeated.

 

“Tillira Skywalker,” Rey said, twisting the edge of one cuff between her fingers. “So far as I can tell, she basically raised me onboard ship.”

 

“Makes sense.” Poe nudged her shoulder companionably. “You’ve got stars in your eyes, like a spacer.”

 

Rey smiled abstractedly, but it fled quickly. “Her mother was Shmi Skywalker’s younger sister, and I think she would have been about forty when she had me. She must have been… I guess she was the General’s father’s cousin.”

 

“Anakin Skywalker’s cousin.” Poe digested this, then nodded seriously. “Well, Anakin Skywalker was a legend in a cockpit, I guess it runs in the family. Do you think she’s dead? She won’t be more than about sixty.”

 

“I don’t know.” Rey jammed her hands into her pockets, and came to a stop in front of the forward nacelle of one of the interceptors. “What if she isn’t?”

 

_What if she isn’t and she never came back for me?_

 

Poe halted with her, and slung an arm around her shoulders, easy and companionable. “We’ll manage, Rey.”

 

Rey looked at her warped reflection in the interceptor’s highly polished surface, and thought of the desert woman and Maz Kanata. _The belonging you seek is ahead of you. There is a family for you, my loved one._

 

“Have you told Luke yet?”

 

Rey shook her head. “I’m supposed to be back there now.” She leaned into Poe’s embrace momentarily, and then stepped out from the circle of his arm and paced around the interceptor. “This seats two,” she said.

 

“Yeah.” Poe caught up with her. “This is an A-5; the A-1 through 4 models only seat one, like a classic X-wing. They don’t really make X-wings with secondary seating for a gunner any more – there are still a few knocking around but there haven’t been any that are operational since the last war. It spoils the manoeuvrability without gaining much firepower. This has independent guns so it has to have space for the gunner, you see?”

 

Rey nodded. “Like a TIE fighter. But better shielded, I think.”

 

“There are mynocks that are better shielded than a TIE fighter. Although they move like a dream. You ever find one, on Jakku?”

 

“Several,” Rey said. “At least, bits of them.”  


They fell into a contemplative silence as they completed a circle of the interceptor.

 

“You know,” Poe said, “they’d never let me up in one, unescorted. But if a pilot Jedi asked…?”

 

 

They made it back to the centre of Hanna City in record time, having confined themselves to a single victory roll that made Rey whoop.

 

“Finn would have yelled,” Rey shouted.

 

“Not if we warned him,” Poe shouted gallantly back.

 

“Why would we do that?”

 

 

General Organa and Luke were waiting for them in the suite’s main reception room. Luke was staring out of the window, one hand idle on his lightsaber hilt; General Organa was sitting at the table, flipping through her datapad and a selection of flimsis. Kaydel was lurking in a corner. She cast Poe a significant glance, and the pair of them slipped quietly out of the room.

 

Rey reached out in the Force. _I found her_ , she said, walking over to the table and picking up a spare stylus. She was facing Luke, who was now looking back into the room but staring at the floor, and her back was directly to General Organa.

 

Luke looked up sharply, and the General’s hand paused on a flimsi. _Merel?_ Luke said.

 

 _And her daughter. Tillira Skywalker_. Rey paused, and took a deep breath. She didn’t need breath to speak like this, but it felt right, felt necessary, felt like gearing herself up for a step off a cliff. _And Tillira’s daughter. Rey Skywalker. She must have brought me up onboard ship._

 

There was a moment of perfect stillness. Rey set down the stylus.

 

Luke wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. _I told you so_ , he said. There was a steady happiness in his Force presence; Rey turned her face into it, like the rare warmth of the sun on Lah’mu.

 

“Ugh,” General Organa said aloud, pushing back her chair and standing. _I don’t want to hear that more than once, Luke._

 

Rey held out one of her arms to General Organa, who put an arm around her back, and the other around Luke’s waist. Rey closed her eyes.

 

 _Cousin_ , General Organa said simply, leaning her forehead against Rey’s, and Rey felt tears start in her eyes again.

  


_We can go home soon_ , General Organa promised. Her arm around Rey’s back squeezed tight. _We can go home soon, and you can do all the thinking you need to about this. Two days._

_I’m all right,_ Rey answered, her forehead still leaning against the General’s, her chest squeezing as her body tried to work out how to process emotions, and if she still wanted to cry or not. Part of her did; another part was laughing. Another part was stunned, starry-eyed with shock, chasing her mother’s name around her head like a semi-legendary scavenger’s treasure had suddenly come to life. _It’s okay._

 

 

Someone had taken a picture of her visiting the Customs House and sent it to the press, as if it might be something important; Rey had not noticed at the time, but the General scrutinised it and said it had probably been taken from a long way away.

 

“Ugh,” Rey said, feeling watched, and turned the datapad face down on the breakfast table, which made the General snort before she got up to go to her meeting. Rey had read the attached story, and felt like the time she’d spent doing so was a waste of her hard-won skills. There was nothing to it, because whoever had taken the picture hadn’t dared to follow her into the Customs House. There was a note about Rey going to see her fiancé give a talk, and showing off her Jedi pilot skills, but Rey intended to ignore that.

 

“It’s a nice picture,” Poe said politely when he came round, although she hadn’t shown him and neither had anyone else.

 

Rey picked the datapad up again and stared fiercely at the picture. She was standing in the middle of the carriage near an exit, holding onto a strap to stay upright, her head tilted into the light that gilded the detailing of her suit. JEDI ON THE HIGH WIRE, screamed the headline. Rey dropped the datapad on the table instead of succumbing to the temptation to throw it.

 

Poe’s mouth twitched, and he pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. She turned onto her side and slung her legs over his thighs and one arm around his shoulders, leaning into him, her cheek pressed against the point of his shoulder. His arm curled around her back in return, comfortable and easy. “Finn might see it,” he offered. “That’s a big gossip magazine. They sell halfway round the galaxy. He’ll be able to see you and know you’re all right.”

 

“Oh,” Rey said, and thought about this. She tipped her head up and kissed a spot just under Poe’s jaw, just because it was there; he shivered and his arm around her tightened, and for a second she was scared she’d said or done too much in Finn’s absence, and then he turned his head and caught her lips with his.

 

Rey made a happy noise, and moved in towards him. He smiled into her mouth, and broke the kiss only when neither of them could breathe.

 

“I like that,” she said, her breath a little short.

 

“Kissing? Or the idea of Finn seeing a copy of that picture?”

 

“Both,” Rey said, and leaned in again.


	17. Chapter 17

She was grateful when they boarded the ships that were to take them back to Lah’mu. Blessedly, there were no more cameras besides the official one, to take a holo of the departing group for posterity, and Rey felt she could just about cope with that. She stood next to Luke, tried to look calm and official, and wondered if Finn would see this picture, too. She hoped so. At one point, she glanced sideways and caught Poe’s eye, and he winked at her, quick and deliberate. She laughed.

 

“You kids,” the General said, dry but tolerant, with a vague note of _let’s get this over_ with in her voice. Her back was ramrod straight, her head held high and her eyes serene, but Rey knew she disliked the heavily structured floor-length white dress she was wearing, and the beaded blue bolero - traditional Alderaanian styles and colours, someone had explained, with a strong Yavin influence - and wanted this finished. It had been a long week, Rey thought, and a tiring one. Everyone knew the General had been right now, and most people were more than prepared to fight alongside her officially, as well as providing the unofficial support that had been swelling their ranks for years. That didn’t mean they didn’t resent her; that didn’t mean they weren’t selfish and petty.

 

“Sorry,” Rey said, trying to sound appropriately penitent, at the same time as Poe said “Sorry, ma’am,” and actually managed it.

 

The General very obviously suppressed an eye roll, and Luke shook his head slightly, but Rey could tell they were both amused. Rey smiled herself.

 

They boarded five minutes later, and within an hour they were out of the stratosphere and the General had changed into more characteristic, and more comfortable, olive green clothes and solid brown boots. Rey and Luke had had stuck with their Jedi robes, which were fine if you removed some of the heavier outer layers, and Poe had managed to peel himself out of his formal uniform without creasing any of it and change into something that didn’t wrinkle the second you sat down in a pilot’s seat.

 

“Play a game with me?” the General asked, dealing out a set of sabacc cards with a casual ease that Rey thought she might have learned from Han. Rey agreed, and took her seat for the first round.

 

Rey spent several hours losing fake credits to the General’s perfect sabacc face, and then the General finally took pity and declared that she’d had enough. The General went to sleep in her cabin, saying that she hoped to be on the correct timescale for Lah’mu when they arrived, and Rey knew she should do the same; Poe was fast asleep in bed with a space left for her if she wanted it, and part of Rey wanted desperately to just go and join him the way she’d joined Finn a thousand times, but Luke was restless. It wasn’t a restlessness that derived from some personal concern; there was a ripple in the Force, and though Rey didn’t sense it herself she could feel the echoes of Luke’s awareness, and his restlessness bled over to her.

 

He was prowling the ship, outwardly serene except for the hand that occasionally rested over the hilt of his lightsaber, and the sight of him so plainly on high alert made Rey’s hackles go up and her nerves jangle. She tried not to show it - if the entire ship started to pick up on Luke’s unease, they’d have a very unhappy and demoralising journey on their hands.

 

Finally, she stopped trying to read a retrospective treatise about the Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano which she’d been puzzling her way through for the last two weeks, and tracked Luke down to the ship’s cockpit, staring mordantly out of the viewport.

 

 _What is it?_ she demanded. _You’re acting like a tikra around pick-vultures._

 

 _What - never mind._ Luke glared at the blue streaks of hyperspace, the stars’ fingerprints. _I’m uneasy, Rey. Something feels wrong. Like it’s going to happen. I’m not sure._

 

Rey said nothing.

 

 _I’m usually - not inaccurate._ Luke folded his arms and tapped the fingers of his right hand against the outer edge of his left arm. _But… partial. And I don’t see everything. And seeing a thing does not always make it -_

_True, yes, you said before._ Rey sat down in a jump seat and looked up at him. _What do you see?_

 

 _Darkness_ , he said. _Here. Soon._

 

All the hairs on the back of Rey’s neck prickled. _The ship is clean. I checked it myself._

 

Luke’s mouth twisted.

 

 _Tell them to change course,_ Rey suggested, flicking her eyes at the pilot and co-pilot, who were doing a good job of pretending they weren’t besieged by Jedi peering over their shoulders.

 

_What if that is what allows it to happen?_

 

Rey puffed her cheeks out and blew a strand of hair out of her face.

 

_Leia won’t thank me for waking her._

_She won’t thank you for letting her sleep._ Rey got to her feet and rubbed her hands over her thighs, frowning at nothing. _I’m going to wake Poe._

 

In the cabin she shared with Poe, she stopped by her own bunk before waking him - he slept lightly, all three of them did, but Rey was capable of a silence that got past even his caution - and quietly picked up a commlink attached to the outside of her rucksack with a carabiner. She stared at it, thinking. There might be no need, and if there was a need, her message would be bounced back and forth between so many transmission stations that it might not reach Finn until it was too late. Finn might still be away from Lah’mu, and powerless to help. She might scare him unnecessarily…

 

Rey took a deep breath, and typed _Luke thinks danger might be coming here_ , and sent the message through the commlink’s simple messaging feature before she could think better of it.  Then she sat down on Poe’s bunk and shook his shoulder; he was awake and sitting upright when she’d hardly touched his skin. Rey took a moment to appreciate the lights and shadows on his bare chest in the half-darkness, now that her eyes were acclimatised.

 

“What?” he said sleepily. “What - something wrong?” He scrubbed his hands over his face.

 

“Maybe.” Rey pulled her feet up onto the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Luke thinks he’s seen something - some kind of… premonition, I don’t know, a Force vision.”

 

“Did he say what?”

 

“The Force is apparently not that… specific.” Rey turned her head to one side and looked at him. “I want to check the ship. If Luke’s worried, I’m worried.”

 

“Oh, kriffing hell,” Poe muttered, with no heat at all, and flailed around in search of his shirt and boots. Rey found one boot, and the shirt turned out to be under his pillow. He staggered to his feet, and then - apparently as a precaution - wrapped his blaster belt around his hips, blaster still buckled into its holster. “Okay, I’m up, let’s go.”

 

They went out into the corridor.

 

“Now,” Poe said thoughtfully, running a hand through his curls. “If I were a First Order bastard. If. Where would I put a tracking device?”

 

“Engine room?” Rey suggested, suppressing the impulse to say she’d checked the ship. She had, of course, but she’d done it before anyone had boarded, and she didn’t know everyone onboard; a couple of the security staff were Chandrilans she’d never even met, though she assumed they’d been vetted. “Baggage, where no-one will look until we land?”

 

He pointed at her. “Good thoughts. Let’s start there.”

 

The two of them were conducting a fingertip search of the coolant system when Rey found the bug. She felt like ice water had suddenly flooded her, and her throat closed at the thought that there was a traitor somewhere here, but she managed to clear her throat and call out. “I found something.”

 

Poe was over by her side before she could blink. “The bastards,” he said evenly, looking at the small black circle with a tiny red beeping light that Rey had found.

 

“They must know our trajectory,” Rey said grimly. “I don’t know if binning it would work, now - they’ll know we’re in the area. Unless we could eject it, but there’s no passing traffic to stick it to.” She prodded at it carefully with a multitool from her pocket. “It’s not the kind that explodes.”

 

“Are you sure?” Poe asked, but by the time he had finished his sentence Rey had already pulled the limpet-like little thing from its place.

 

“Yes,” Rey said, redundantly.

 

Poe grinned and shook his head.

 

The two of them found General Organa and Luke in the General’s quarters, the General having redressed herself, wearing her hair in a long, plain braid and a scowl on her face. Luke didn’t look terribly pleased either, and both of them looked absolutely thunderous when Rey produced the tracker.

 

“It wasn’t here when I checked the ship, before we boarded,” Rey said.

 

“So it was probably someone with us,” General Organa said grimly. “Any ideas who?”

 

“No,” Luke said, rising from his seat. The Force rose with him; Rey held her breath. “But I will know shortly.”

 

He looked at Rey before he walked out, and she nodded. She touched Poe’s arm lightly. “I think you should stay here,” she said.

 

Poe looked down at her. “Understood,” he said.

 

“I’m not going to -” Rey struggled with her words. “I’m not - him. But I might have to scare a few people with the Force. You won’t like it.”

 

He smiled at her, bittersweet but trusting, and kissed her forehead.

 

Rey leaned into him for a second, and then hurried away.

 

“Explain that to me, Dameron,” she heard the General say as she caught up with Luke. “I need some entertainment in my life.”

 

Luke had been waiting for Rey, but as soon as she caught him to him he turned on his heel and strode away, towards the crew’s quarters. Most of them would be there now, playing dejarik or sabacc or something to while away the long journey, or maybe just sleeping; Rey hoped their culprit wasn’t one of the latter. Dragging someone out of their bunk to interrogate them would be awkward, and would create panic.

 

Halfway there, Rey noticed a young steward wiping down a table and polishing some unnecessarily ornate cutlery. He glanced up at them briefly and then returned his eyes to his work. Rey and Luke kept walking, Rey cataloguing him as one of the staff she didn’t know, a Chandrilan…

 

They both felt it at the same time, that fine tendril of guilt staining the air. Rey knew it because they stopped at the same moment. She looked at Luke, and then the pair of them turned on their heels and stared at the steward.

 

The man began to shake, but he tried to brazen it out. “Can I help you? Jedi Skywalker and - uh - Jedi Rey?”

 

Rey took the tracker out of her pocket, and the man’s expression as his eyes zeroed in on it made her feel like all the air had been sucked out of the room. “Why did you do it?” she said, very softly.

 

The man collapsed onto a banquette and put his face in his hands. Luke crossed the distance between the two of them faster than light and pulled his hands away, clearly fearing some kind of poison pill that would silence the steward, but all they saw were that the man’s eyes were already streaming with tears.

 

“I’m sorry,” the steward sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry - I knew it was wrong, but they said they’d kill everyone I know and take my daughters and nephews, and everyone knows what they do to lost children now -”

 

Rey’s stomach plunged into her boots, in defiance of all biological reason, and Luke’s face turned even more grim.

 

“They make them into stormtroopers,” she said, still soft.

 

The steward nodded.

 

 _Get Leia_ , Luke said.

 

Rey turned and went.

 

“Don’t leave me alone with him!” the steward yelled, voice breaking with panic.

 

“You’re safer with him than you are with me,” Rey answered, trying to keep her own voice level, and master the fury growing within her. The First Order had taken Finn’s story of survival and made it into a weapon, and Rey was struggling with consciously thinking through her anger and letting it go in a way she hadn’t for years.

 

She was taking deep, meditative breaths, and finding them inadequate, when she knocked on the door of the General’s room and entered. Both Poe and the General were sitting down on chairs designed for comfort, but Poe looked distinctly awkward; their eyes shot to her as soon as she entered the room.

 

“We found him,” Rey said, and caught Poe’s eye. “He told us everything the moment he saw we were looking for someone.” She paused. “I don’t think he’s a professional.”

 

“He certainly doesn’t sound it,” the General said, rising.

 

 

Alavert Hashel, aged thirty, told the rest of his story surrounded by the four of them, the security staff now on alert and the pilots primed to change course as soon as they’d worked out what exactly Hashel had done, and if there were any further trackers. The rest of the ship was bustling, but the room in which Hashel confessed felt unnervingly silent and still. Rey could feel the same current of controlled anger in both Luke and the General, and was comforted; she curled her hands tightly around the top of the chair she was leaning against. 

 

He was from one of the more distant Chandrilan planets. He wasn’t a bad person; he’d just been a soft target in the wrong place at the wrong time, in a cantina on the wrong moon two months ago. Rey wondered if others had been turned to serve the First Order, too; surely they could not have been certain who would work on this flight. And probably everyone on board had something to threaten.

 

If she’d been a kinder person and a better Jedi, Rey thought, she’d be able to say she didn’t blame him. But she definitely did.

 

“Did they tell you what they wanted?” the General asked, at last.

 

Hashel shook his head. He kept crying in fits and starts, like a broken wet refresher. “They said if I asked questions they’d take my girls away. They’re only babies. I thought - you could defend yourselves -“

 

“You could have warned us,” Poe said. His eyes were almost hard, and that struck Rey strangely; she’d always thought his face was meant for laughing.

 

“I meant to. I was going to! But then the Jedi came…”

 

There was a long silence.

 

“You realise,” Luke said, the first words he’d spoken to Hashel, “if we’re blown out of the sky, you will be too.”

 

Hashel flinched. “Yes. But my girls will be safe.”

 

For a while, nobody spoke. It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like years to Rey.

 

In the quiet, the co-pilot entered the room. She was trembling, her eyes wide. “General Organa, ma’am. We have a - a transmission.”

 

“Who from?” General Organa asked, her voice even.

 

“The - the First Order.”

 

“Patch it through to the cockpit,” the General said. “I’ll come.” She rose, dusting off her hands, and straightened her tunic with as much dignity as if it were her complex white gown, her regal nod dismissing the co-pilot, who fled with obvious relief.

 

“What are you going to do with me?” Hashel said, in a small voice.

 

“Lock you in a toilet,” the General said, without looking at him. “I’m not worried about creating a queue. The way things are going, the rest of us will be pissing our pants anyway. Luke, see to it, will you? You’ve always been good with mechanical things, and I need my combat-rated pilots where I can see them.”

 

“Of course,” Luke said, standing. Hashel quavered, his hands fisting in his lap with fear; Rey thought that his terror of Luke was probably why the General had asked Luke to imprison the man, not because she had any doubts about Luke’s ability to pilot a corvette in a combat situation. It would ensure compliance.

 

“Make sure we can get him out again, Luke.”

 

“Of course,” Luke said, slightly drier than before.

 

“You two,” the General said, making a small gesture. “With me.”

 

Rey left her seat without even thinking about it, and from the way Poe started up, she thought he’d had the same instinctive reaction.

 

“Now,” she heard Luke say to Hashel as they walked away, “you can walk to this toilet, or you can levitate. It’s up to you.”

 

The mood in the cockpit was sombre and scared. Rey could see why quite easily, considering the medium-sized, well-armed black yacht that kept pace with them, and the small force of attacking TIEs that hung about it. The yacht had no First Order markings, and Rey sensed something that made her strongly uneasy, a familiar Dark flavour to it. Their corvette was armed, but their fighter escort was severely outnumbered, and Rey didn’t like their odds.

 

“A transmission, you said,” the General prompted, folding her hands in front of her as naturally as Poe had fallen into parade rest and Rey had softened her knees and tensed all her muscles to be ready for a rapid attack.

 

The pilot leaned forward and flicked a switch. There was no sound but the crackle of a communication channel opening.

 

“Good morning,” the General said. (Rey checked her chronometer, now set to Lah’mu time, and realised it was midnight there. The General wasn’t an easy woman to catch out.) “This is the _Queen Breha,_ diplomatic corvette, requesting identification.”

 

There was no response.

 

The General sighed. “What do you want?” she said, temporarily patient.

 

There was a slight click and a crackle, and then Rey heard Kylo Ren speak, over the communications line. Coldness raced through her bloodstream, and she grabbed Poe’s hand, squeezing tight; he’d gone ashen at the sound of his torturer’s voice.

 

“To talk,” Kylo Ren said.

 

The General didn’t hesitate. “With an escort like that? You bring the Darkness with you… Lord Ren. I won’t negotiate with the shadows.”

 

“The shadows have everything in the galaxy to offer you,” Kylo Ren answered. “You don’t have a choice. You don’t need one. _Trust me_.”

 

The General said nothing for a second. Rey raised her shields and pressed a little closer to Poe, who was shaking slightly; both Skywalker twins were humming with power, the tides of the Force rising ominously around them, and Rey didn’t know which of them she thought was more dangerous. Luke was presumably still locking a traitor in a toilet, as one did, but she could feel his Force-presence expanding in response to the menace of the Dark Side from the other end of the ship.

 

When the General spoke, waves crashed and roared in her voice. “Kylo Ren broke my son and murdered my husband. He burned my brother’s legacy to ashes. He kills my men and murders civilians. He tears children from their families and razes homes to the ground. _Never once_ has he shown that he wishes to talk instead of fight.” She paused for breath, one soft indrawing of air like the first whispers of a hurricane. “Kylo Ren - if you want me to sit down at the negotiating table, this is the worst way to ask. I _cannot_ trust you.”

 

Rey squeezed Poe’s hand hard and let go, then made her way to the front of the cockpit and nudged the co-pilot gently. The co-pilot gave up her place at once, and after a few moments Rey heard the shuffling and shifting of Poe taking the pilot’s place and settling in, his hands on the controls. Low whispers and murmuring, and then footsteps, heralded the pilots’ departure.

 

Combat-rated pilots, General Organa had said.

 

“This is the easy way, Mother,” Kylo Ren said at last. “There is a harder one. Don’t make me take it.”

 

There was a very long pause. The General had the tracker in the palm of her hand; she stared at it now, and slowly it folded in on itself with a cracking and popping of ruined plastic, a smoking of wrecked circuits. She dropped it, and crushed its skeleton beneath the heel of her boot. When she raised her head, her eyes were clear and calm.

 

“My son’s name is Ben Organa,” the General said, and leaned forward to cut the transmission.

 

For a second, Rey didn’t breathe.

 

The General’s voice turned hard and business-like. “Drop us out of hyperspace, lose them. Tell Kun and Arana to scatter. Kylo Ren won’t be interested in them. He’s here for me.” She glanced sideways at Rey. “And you, if he knows you’re here.”

 

“He does,” Rey said. Kylo Ren was now probing at the corners of her mind with sharp fingers. _Cousin, come and talk to me._

 

 _Get fucked_ , Rey replied without words.

 

 _If I make your little pilot ask you, will you do it then?_ Kylo Ren asked, and there was cruelty in his Force-sense, his words laden with memories of what it had felt like to rummage casually through Poe’s brain, breaking and entering.

 

“You know what I taught you, Poe,” Rey said, stabilising the ship as Poe finished giving Karé and Iolo their orders and punched in the combinations to take them out of hyperspace. “Now would be a good time to work on it.”

 

“Oh,” Poe said, sounding scared but defiant. “Yeah. I can do that.”

 

“Let me know if you need help,” Rey said. “Or if you want me to do it for you.” Kylo Ren was now picking insistently at the seams of Poe’s mind, but Rey had taught him well, and the seeking tendrils kept sliding off. It wouldn’t work if Kylo Ren really decided to get stuck in, but it could keep Poe safe for now, until Kylo Ren realised exactly how Rey had taught Poe to defend himself.

 

“Uh-huh,” Poe said, oddly breathless, clearly caught between several things at once, and then the TIE fighters came screaming at them and the corvette jerked and dropped out of hyperspace, straight into an asteroid field.

 

Rey yelled and Poe whooped, and sent them spinning to one side of a large chunk of rock hurling towards them, ducking and diving among the debris. A shower of small fragments hit them with a rattle, and Rey grabbed the intercom and flicked it on.

 

“Everyone sit down and secure yourselves! This is going to be rough!”

 

Poe whooped again, pulling off a slick victory roll to evade a group of three asteroids that looked as if they’d broken up recently, and were still streaking across the sky together.

 

Rey got her hand off the intercom. “That’s going to make everyone feel much better!”

 

“Sorry, _corazón_ ,” Poe said, grinning fiercely. “Where are the Order? Close behind?”

 

Rey checked the radar screen, and reached out, her senses questing for Kylo Ren’s presence. She found him, all his will bent on her and his mother.

 

My son’s name is Ben, the General had said. Rey wondered if she believed it: if she drew the same distinction between Ben Organa and Kylo Ren that she drew between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, or if she saw Ben and Kylo as one and the same person, the way Luke saw Anakin and Vader.

 

 _Cousin, you’re wasting your time_ , Kylo Ren told her. _Give in._

 

 _I have nothing to say to you_ , Rey answered, and when his rage boiled over and all his focus narrowed in on Poe, Rey caught him and blocked him. It was hard, like holding back the tide: Kylo Ren was good at battering his way into people’s heads, and his defences there were far less weak and undisciplined than his wild lightsaber forms. But Rey was a current that would not falter, not a beach that could be worn down, and she would not surrender.

 

“I’m holding off Ren,” she said, through clenched teeth. “I can’t - and fly.”

 

“Let me take care of the ship,” Poe said confidently, as they ducked and weaved and hid behind asteroids. The TIE fighters were pursuing them, and every now and then their cannons grazed the corvette, making the entire thing rock, but either they were too lightly armed or Kylo Ren had given orders that the ship was not to be destroyed, because none of the blows were really telling.

 

Poe pulled off a feint that left one of the fighters splintering to bits on an asteroid, and another two crashing into each other with a brief burst of flame before the vacuum of space erased it. He whooped happily again. “Man, this thing really moves. I never realised!”

 

Rey managed a smile, slumped in her pilot’s chair. Kylo Ren was still throwing himself insistently at the barriers she had flung up around herself and Poe, bulwarks of sand and heat. She wondered, for a split second, if she could let him in to the hellscape of Jakku in peak dry season and let him lose himself, but then dismissed the idea on the grounds that this wasn’t the time to experiment. She still populated her shields with a few of the nightmares that had menaced her childhood, and hoped they gave Kylo Ren something to think about.

 

The black yacht was still following them closely, its speed hampered by the asteroids and its manoeuvrability inferior to the corvette’s. Poe mocked it, swinging the corvette just within range of its guns and dashing away again, slaloming between the asteroids whirling past.

 

“We have to get out of here,” he shouted.

 

“I know, so do it!” Rey shouted back. Ren was pouring poison in her ears, whispering _they don’t love you they don’t even like you they’re holding you back you could be so great_ , and Rey believed none of it but the relentlessness of it wore at her like sand in the wind. It was also hard to fight off his prying at the corners of her shield for Poe at the same time as she deflected his attacks on her.

 

Poe pulled off a sharp hairpin turn and dive combination that no-one else could have managed, whistled around a small shower of asteroids that could easily have blown in the viewport, and then, in the blink of an eye, punched them into hyperspace. Rey slumped with relief as Ren’s incessant droning was cut off, and then pushed herself upright in her chair; she was hanging against the straps.

 

They were hurtling through the hyperlanes as fast as the corvette could go, no doubt trying to gain as much of a headstart as possible before dropping out in advance of the yacht’s arrival in the lane, and Rey leaned back into the memory foam moulding of the chair watching the monitors tick over until Poe let out a satisfied grunt, punched in a new set of coordinates, and ripped them out of hyperspace with a jerk that one of the General’s aides would probably complain about later.

 

They didn’t rest, or stop, until several hours later. They’d deviated from their planned route home by lightyears. Rey had no idea where exactly they were or where the nearest friendly planet they could refuel at was. She had scooped up the tracker’s fragments, scattered all over the floor and thrown into odd corners of the cockpit, and ruined any remaining half-complete components, but she still had no idea if the First Order might be able to track them, or if they might run into a patrol. But Poe put the autopilot on and looked at her, blew his cheeks out and smiled in silent expression of a job completed.

 

“What do we do now?” Rey asked.

 

Poe shrugged. “Get that guy out of the toilet, I guess,” he said.

 

“What are we going to do with him?” Rey said, suddenly reminded of the steward. She’d forgotten about him almost entirely.

 

“I don’t know,” Poe said thoughtfully. He ran a hand through his curls. “Did you get anything new from Kylo Ren?”

 

Rey shook her head. “Same old. He wants me to come to the Dark side. He wants the General to come to the Dark side. He was trying to tell me - us - how powerful we’d be…” She fell silent, and picked at the fastening of her boots. “He doesn’t understand. But no. I don’t think he said anything… new. He did call the General his mother. He acknowledged her. I guess that might - be important. Somehow.”

 

“Finn would know,” Poe said, unbuckling his harness and leaning back in his chair. “Or he’d produce - like - six different scenarios, with context briefings and probabilities attached, and say he couldn’t be certain but he’d put his credits on Scenario C. Or something.”

 

They both laughed, small and quiet.

 

“I miss him,” Rey said, a few minutes later.

 

“Me too,” Poe said.

 

“Do you think he’s okay?”

 

“I hope so.”

 

Rey digested this, and then squinted at Poe. “Can I have a kiss?”

 

Poe snorted, and held his arms out to her. She clambered over into his lap, almost but not quite kneeing him somewhere sensitive, and pressed her mouth to his; his arms came around her, one hand sliding up to cradle the base of her skull, the other pulling her close against him by the small of her back, and his mouth opened under hers.

 

“I love that we can do this now,” Rey murmured, and Poe let out a blissful little noise. They stayed there for several moments, warm and unhurried, before Rey became aware that Luke was going to come and look for her very shortly and pulled away.

 

“Mm. What?” Poe complained, and she ran her hands through his hair and admired the way his lower lip had bruised with the scrape of her teeth.

 

“Traitor in the toilet, remember?” she said. “I’m not sure Luke can get him out again.”

 

“Oh. Well, in that case,” Poe said, and let go of her. “Can’t have the poor guy disrupting the plumbing.”

 

She slithered off Poe’s lap, and intercepted Luke just before he entered the cockpit. He gave her an extremely narrow look.

 

“So,” Rey said quickly, before he could comment. “Exactly how stuck is this guy?”

 

Luke looked embarrassed. “Well, I could get him out if I took the entire door off,” he said. “It seemed like a proportionate response at the time.”

 

“Let me get my tools,” Rey said, and went back to her cabin.

 

Her commlink wasn’t blinking. She wrote a quick message for Finn - _panic over, we outran them_ \- and picked up her set of tools.

 

She received a response hours later, after they’d managed to refuel on a neutral space station and buy components for a jerry-rigged electronic tag for Hashel.

 

 _You two are a disaster_ , it read, _I should be there to take care of you. See you at home, don’t get kidnapped or I’ll come and rescue you myself!_

 

“He acts like that’s a threat,” Poe remarked, changing into sleep clothes. “Being rescued by Finn is nice. He makes a very handsome knight in shining armour.”

 

Rey smiled, and something small and warm filled up the empty space in her chest that Kylo Ren’s sniping had carved.


	18. Chapter 18

_After a bloody battle that leaves Rey shaking and disoriented, Rey sleeps alone; Finn and Poe are not here, and Finn is so far away that she can only sense the faintest glow when she reaches for him in the Force. Luke is closeted with the generals and tacticians, conducting an after-action analysis. He sends Rey to wash and to eat and to sleep, telling her she is tired and doesn't know it yet, and curled up on her bed Rey can't deny it. Her eyes will not stay open._

_She feels stretched, pulled to pieces, mixed up, and when she tries to meditate she only yawns. She wraps herself in blankets to try to feel safer, more protected; imagines Poe and Finn on either side of her, bolstering her._

_When the desert woman comes to her, sitting on the steps of some old ruined temple that reminds her of D'Qar, Rey almost shouts at her. This restlessness is frightening her because she doesn't know where it leads. Out of habit, she tells herself it doesn't have to lead anywhere: she can face it and let it go. It does not control her._

_Still, the fear is hard to set aside._

_Where have you been? she says. I needed you! I need you!_

_No, my loved one, the desert woman says. Her smile is bittersweet as she sits down and tucks her skirts beneath herself. You have never needed me less._

_Please, Rey says, I miss you._

_That isn't the same thing. The desert woman's kiss on her forehead is soft and dry. Wake up, my loved one._

_Rey opens her eyes, and Luke is knocking on her door._

_I thought I'd check on you, he says. Do you need anything?_

_They talk for hours. Rey sleeps past dawn the next day, and has no dreams._

 

***

 

Rey refused to change her records, or use the name she’d been given at birth, until they got back to Lah’mu and found Finn waiting for them.

 

“I hear you have news for me,” Finn said into Rey’s shoulder, Rey having thrown herself at him more or less the moment she saw him. It was raining again, plastering her loose hair to her skin, but Rey had Finn back in her arms and Poe’s hand on her back and she was content to be damp so long as it didn’t mean she had to go anywhere.

 

 _Yes_ , Rey said to Finn’s familiar Force presence, luxuriating in its steady glow.

 

“Never going to get used to that,” Finn said with conviction, without even trying to make the effort to respond, and Poe – who could probably guess that Rey was talking, just not aloud – gave a slightly strangled laugh and agreed. Finn tilted his head and leaned forward a little; Rey felt Poe lean in, and heard the two of them kiss.

 

“I’ll need your help with the data,” Rey said, muffled by the worn leather of the jacket Finn was wearing. It wasn’t diplomatic-delegation appropriate, and by mutual agreement they had left it behind for Finn when he got back.

 

“Any time.” Finn was bursting with curiosity, and Rey stifled a giggle.

 

 _My mother’s name was Tillira_ , she said silently. _Her mother’s name was Merel. Tillira grew up on a ship. She raised me in space, too. I was onboard ship when I was a toddler._

 

Finn held her slightly away from him. “Skywalker?” he said very quietly.

 

Rey nodded.

 

Finn smiled broadly. “I’m glad you know,” he said. “I’ll help you find her, if she’s alive.”

 

“Your family next,” Rey said, leaning back into his broad chest. She thought he was thinner than he had been when he went away, and instinctively calculated the time until the next hot meal would be served in the mess.

 

“Uh,” Finn said, half-laughing. “Don’t think I’ve got one. A birth one, I mean. I’ve got you two.”

 

Rey clung to him more tightly, surprising herself with the depths of the vicious anger she felt for the First Order who had taken Finn from his family as a baby.

 

“Hey,” Finn said, squeezing her gently. “It’s enough. Now are we going to stand out here in the rain all afternoon, or what?”

 

 

 

There was a celebratory feel to the mess at dinner. So many key figures had gone to Chandrila, and were now returned; the news was good, and there had been no significant casualties for some time. Even their lucky escape from Kylo Ren had been spun into a tale of derring-do, skill and courage outmatching the dastardly First Order; Rey blamed Kaydel. Finn had good news from his mission, though it obviously wasn't to be shared publicly, and there was a general air of excitement. The food was better than usual, or maybe it just felt better than usual because Rey had been away eating unfamiliar things for so long, and people were smiling. Black Squadron swarmed them, pleased to have Rey and Finn back, delighted to have Poe back, and bottles of moonshine and Tatooinian firewater appeared from nowhere, as people spilled outside into the comparative warmth of the night - it wasn't warm, exactly, Rey thought as Finn draped their shared jacket over her shoulders, it was just warmer than when they'd been here before, as the seasons had changed. But it wasn't raining, and with lanterns out and a small bonfire it looked friendly. Someone got out a guitar. At one point, Snap successfully peer-pressured Poe into singing. Rey and Finn sat in a corner to melt quietly.

 

He returned to them flushed with embarrassment and bright-eyed, and dropped down to sit next to Finn and join their huddle.

 

"Force," he sighed, on a breathless note that made Finn's arm around Rey's shoulder tighten, and something curl in the pit of Rey's stomach. "I'm never doing that again."

 

"You say that every time," Finn said, grinning. "We like your voice."

 

Rey, more sympathetic, passed Poe the bottle of Tatooinian firewater she had laughingly confiscated from Luke. He pulled the cap off and took a long gulp, then re-capped it and handed the bottle back to Rey.

 

"Let's agree," Finn said, leaning back against Rey and slinging his legs over Poe's lap, "we stick together from now on. Because I was miserable without you two."

 

"We might not always be able to," Rey reminded him, pressing her face into Finn's neck. "You know that better than I do."

 

"Yeah," Finn said wistfully, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. The fire shone on his skin and made him look like the single most beautiful thing Rey had ever seen, as gorgeous as the _Falcon_ at full tilt, as lovely as the perfect lightsaber kata. Rey caught her breath, and saw Poe do the same thing, eyes dark and endless. If she had stars in her eyes, then Poe had space in his; the endless black that called to Rey, full of promise.

 

She slid her fingers up the nape of Finn's neck, and his mouth curved into a smile.

 

"We should try, though," Poe said, watching them both; Rey slid her left hand around and tangled her fingers with his. "At least to have a base we all return to."

 

"We already do that," Rey said, and because she managed to keep her eyes open she saw Poe blink in surprise and realisation. She smiled at him, a little mockingly, and he returned a smirk that ought to be illegal - and probably was, in several systems.

 

"We could probably try harder." Poe had his other hand on one of Finn's knees, and was rubbing small circles into it with his thumb.

 

"Maybe," Rey said, and he echoed her. Rey knew they were all thinking of a war to be won.

 

"I want to go to bed," Finn announced, and held up a hand. "But I want some more of that firewater first."

 

Rey passed him the bottle and let him have a sip, then handed it off to Iolo and helped Poe haul Finn to his feet. "Come on," she said. "Let's go."

 

 

None of them were coordinated enough to pull mattresses and sheets off beds. Rey and Poe dropped Finn, still pretending to be helpless for his own amusement, on his bed, and then Rey pulled her boots off and Poe set to undoing Finn's.

 

"You spoil him," Rey said, flicking on the night crystal and yanking Finn's other boot off with far less gentleness than Poe. Poe laughed, and toed off his shoes, kissing her briefly - his palm curling around the back of her skull so gently, fingers curling into her hair, lips warm and sweet stealing her breath -  before disengaging with a little laugh at Rey's half gasp, and climbing over Finn to lie on the side next to the wall. Rey lay down on Finn's other side, and smiled to see Poe kiss Finn the same way, Finn's arm curling around Poe's waist, Finn smiling into Poe's mouth.

 

 _This is what I want_ , Rey said silently to herself. _This is what I want._

 

"I wonder what my mother would have thought," she said drowsily, resting her head on Finn's broad shoulder, feeling his hand find a place at the small of her back, heavy and reassuring. She knew nothing about Tillira, nothing at all, and that idea hurt less with Poe and Finn tangled up next to her, her anchors, her safest places.

 

"Wonder what _mine_ would have said," Finn said, almost laughing. "Maybe I came from a planet where it's always supposed to be three in a bed."

 

“Mine would have loved you both,” Poe said, with such conviction he completely silenced both Rey and Finn, except for a soft gasping noise Finn made and the slight exhale of Rey feeling like she’d just been punched in the stomach in a good way. “She would have called me a cradle-robber, but she would have loved you. What? What did I say?”

 

“Nothing,” Rey mumbled, dazed, and reached over to tangle her fingers in Poe’s t-shirt, pull him closer to her and Finn.

 

“Go to sleep,” Finn said, voice full of stunned affection.

 

 

They all woke up extremely hungover. Poe lay in bed groaning and claiming to be grounded for life until Finn brought him painkillers and water, and then dragged himself out of bed insisting that a run would help. Finn and Rey saw him off, made sure BB-8 was hooked up to charge properly – the sockets were wonky in their room, and Rey kept meaning to take them apart but hadn’t had time – and then went up to a nice quiet rooftop to spar. It was threatening to rain, but that was fine. Kylo Ren wouldn’t wait for a sunny day to attack. It was barely dawn, too, but there was enough light to pick out the edges of the roof, and their lightsabers threw off a little more.

 

“I met a clonetrooper while you were gone,” Finn said, circling Rey with a calculating look in his eyes.

 

She braced herself. “Really? Or are you just trying to throw me off?”

 

“I would never.” Finn closed in for the attack; Rey engaged him, cut, parried and danced away. She was faster than he was, but he was relentless. “She was ancient, Rey.”

 

“Yeah, she would be.”

 

“She told me a lot about the Clone Wars. About fighting beside Jedi.”

 

Rey nearly tripped on an uneven bit of roof. “Uh-huh?”

  
“I think she was glad to meet a stormtrooper. A stormtrooper defector, I mean.”

 

Rey tried a new ploy Luke had taught her on Chandrila, and found she wasn’t good enough to pull it off yet; she had to block Finn’s response quickly. “You were happy to meet her.”

 

“Yeah.” Finn tried a fancy move of his own, though Rey didn’t know where he’d got it from; surely the clonetrooper couldn’t have taught him to fight with a lightsaber. Maybe he’d found an old training holo Rey hadn’t seen yet. “We got told a lot about the clonetroopers. They were an ideal. Something to aspire to.”

 

“What, being exactly like -?”

 

“Yeah.” Finn caught his blade on hers and tried to push her back, but that had been Kylo Ren’s favourite trick, and Rey had been practising ways to get away from it until they were written deep in the meat of her muscles. She slipped away.

 

“So what did she tell you?”

 

“Mostly tactics.” Finn tried another experimental pass. This one didn’t work as well. “And she said to get my brain scanned just in case.”

 

Rey got her foot caught in a flowering vine and fell, largely out of surprise. “What?”

 

“The clones had chips in their heads.” Finn held the lightsaber close enough to her throat to formally end the bout, not so close that she could feel its heat, and then snapped it off. “To make them kill all the Jedi.”

 

Flat on her back, Rey imagined that; imagined being controlled into killing your comrades. Imagined herself as one of those old Jedi, and Finn as the clonetrooper who had only ever guarded her back, until someone flipped a switch and made him a puppet.

 

“I already got checked,” Finn said, misinterpreting her horror. “No command chips in this duracrete skull.”  


Rey smiled at the obvious attempt to lighten the situation, and held up a hand for Finn to drag her to her feet.

 

“That was the first time I’ve won in a while.” Finn didn’t bother letting go of her hand until they had to climb off the roof. “Is your hangover that bad?”  


“No. I’m fine. You surprised me, talking about brains.” Rey dropped to ground level.

 

“They’re surprising things.” Finn climbed down beside her. “Anyway. Next time you get into battle, I have some ideas.”

 

“You watching my back,” Rey said, and smiled at the idea. “I like that. And can we have Black Squadron for air support?”  


“I wrote that into my strategic plan,” Finn said, with an air of injury. “Obviously.”

 

Rey’s laugh died, strangled, as they let themselves back into their room and found Poe, gleaming with sweat, pulling his running shirt off over his head.

 

“The Force is with me,” Finn said with great conviction. “Or we wouldn’t have got back in time to see this.”

 

“Uh,” Poe said, from halfway inside his shirt. “I don’t know whether to apologise or what.”

 

“What,” Rey said. “Definitely what.”

 

Poe gave her a narrow-eyed look, but his lips were twitching with ready laughter. “Dibs on the fresher.”

 

“Fair,” Finn said. “You look hot as hell. Literally as well as figuratively.”

 

Poe snorted, and disappeared into the fresher.

 

Rey dropped her lightsaber on her bedside table, and pulled her shoes off. “It’s not fair for one person to be that attractive,” she said, when she heard the fresher start to hum.

 

“I don’t know,” Finn said loyally. “You give him a run for his credits.”

 

“Banthashit,” Rey said.

 

BB-8, now fully charged, rolled around Finn’s feet and announced that Poe thought they were both beautiful, he said so often.

 

“Thanks, BB,” Finn said. “But it doesn’t count if he doesn’t say it to us.”  


BB-8 wanted to know why.

 

“Because that’s how relationships work,” Rey said, and looked at Finn. She was not at all sure it was how relationships worked.

 

Finn shrugged. “Sounds about right,” he said.

 

***

 

Rey changed her ID records herself, using the station in General Organa’s quarters while General Organa watched. Rey knew her age, though not her birthdate; she had chosen the day she chose to stay with the Resistance, which felt like decades ago now. Her planet of origin had gone down as Jakku, and although she considered replacing that with Olimar, she felt it should stay like that until she knew otherwise for certain. Biometrics and other markers remained the same, of course. Only two fields were blank: next of kin, and her surname.

 

Rey typed in _Rook, Finn_ and _Dameron, Poe_ under next of kin, then added two more lines to the form and typed _Skywalker, Luke_ and _Organa, Leia_. The General interested herself in a holo on the other side of the room very suddenly.

 

Rey selected the surname field. _Skywalker_ , she typed, then saved her work and exited the programme.

 

She hugged General Organa again.

 

“Cousin,” General Organa said once more, and her hand stroked smoothly over Rey’s loose hair.

 

For a long moment, they were silent. Rey closed her eyes.

 

“One day,” General Organa said, “when the war is over, I want you to call me something other than General.”

 

“I can do that,” Rey said, and kept to herself the tiny flicker of a thought she’d heard from General Organa.

 

_If we’d had a daughter –_

 

***

 

The next time Rey went into battle she charged forward with Finn laying down covering fire in a very specific pattern that the unnamed clonetrooper had explained to him. Later, when she was exhausted and humming with adrenaline and the Force singing through her he brought her something to eat and watched her expectantly until she choked it down and the humming steadied to a bearable level.

 

“This is what the clonetrooper taught you?” Rey asked.

 

“And a few other things.”  


“It works,” Rey said.

 

“Apparently you should have quiet time to meditate this evening,” Finn said. “She told me Jedi get weird about battles if they don’t get a chance to process death in the Force.”

 

“I’ll take her word for it,” Rey said, and stretched her legs out. “Hey, you should write this down. And tell Luke. He’ll want to know. It might be useful.”

 

Finn raised his eyebrows. “How many more Jedi are there to fight alongside?”  


Rey thought of Jas, and the Zabrak in a spacer’s coat, and Luke, wrestling with his companions’ loss of faith, as profound as his own.

 

“I don’t know,” she said.

 

***

 

_Rey dreams pieces of the same dream over and over again. The desert woman is talking to her, but often doesn't seem to know she's there; they are floating in more water than Rey has ever seen with her waking eyes, they are surrounded by a freezing, absolute whiteness, they are nestled at the base of some large plant, they are standing on a sandy plateau Rey doesn't know._

_Knowledge is currency, says the desert woman; knowledge is power. Knowledge can be turned and used against you._

_I know, Rey says, I know, my blood, you told me -_

_The desert woman only ever answers once, in the hundreds of times Rey has this dream._

_Were you listening, my loved one? she says._

_Yes, Rey says, I promise._

_The desert woman strokes her cheek. Be clever, my loved one, she says, and she is gone._

_What's happening? Rey shouts after her._

_Knowledge is power, the wind whispers._

_Rey wakes confused, every time_ _._

 


	19. Chapter 19

Rey was upside-down with her eyes closed, stacking rocks on top of each other in a circle around herself and being quietly pleased at how much easier it was than it had been a year ago, when pain flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt.

 

" _No_ ," she said, or thought, or both, and somewhere in the distance she heard Finn roar, or scream, or both, and she fell straight out of her handstand. The rock that had been hovering in the air fell over, and the rocks that had been stacked in her path went flying as she collapsed.

 

"Rey," Luke said sharply, "Rey, _what is it_ ," but Rey didn't hear. Sitting up, sightless, her mind was focussed on that brief image of a black X-wing plunging to the ground, that tiny flash that had followed it of Poe's strong, clever hands hauling on the controls, BB-8 screaming.

 

 _Where are you?_ howled that part of Rey that was still a little girl watching her family leave her. _Stay alive. Stay alive. I'll find you!_

 

"Rey!" Luke shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding on tightly. Rey, who hadn't been aware that she was hyperventilating, stopped breathing at the sudden sensation of a fathomless ocean surrounding her, bearing her up with the easy gravity of salt water. "Rey. Steady, now. You'll give everyone Force-sensitive on Lah'mu a migraine. What is it?"

 

Rey sucked in a breath, and held, and counted, and breathed out; breathed in. She wrapped her hands around Luke's sinewy wrists to ground herself. "It's Poe," she said. "Finn saw it too. I heard him."

 

"Finn is on the other side of the base," Luke said.

 

"I heard him," Rey repeated. She was looking at Luke, but she felt as if she wasn't seeing him. "Where's Poe?"

 

"I'm not sure," Luke said, frowning. "You had a vision. What did you see?"

 

"Falling," Rey said. "He was falling." She frowned too, echoing Luke.

 

"Do you think he's dead?" Luke said, calm and level.

 

Rey's grip tightened on Luke's wrists. They'd been off in a quiet corner for Rey's lessons, but when she had yelled and fallen over people had come running. They were not close; lurking a careful distance away, so as not to disturb. But they were worried; they were uneasy. Rey could feel it.

 

"No." The word was torn from her. "I think I would know."

 

"Leia knew about Han," Luke said. "So did I." He hesitated, and then repeated the desert woman's question, the one Rey had so often spoken. "What does your heart tell you?"

 

"To find him," Rey said immediately. "Now."

 

Luke helped her get to her feet. Rey felt like a wire, tightly strung, thrumming at a touch.

 

 _Finn_ , she said silently.

 

 _Here_ , Finn responded. He seldom spoke to her through the Force; he valued his other skills more, and thought he was more use to the Resistance if he took advantage of them. But Rey would know his voice anywhere.

 

Rey picked up the threads of his presence and followed them.

 

 

Finn was in the situation room, surrounded by flimsis, officers, and datapads; hunched over a screen with one earpiece held against his ear and talking to Snap over the radio with a low, quiet tension Rey hadn't heard before. General Organa stood over him, face impassive, hands tightly locked behind her back. On the display in the centre of the room, a green schematic of a planet revolved, several numbered red dots blinking about it. One was circled in red; the others were closing in on it.

 

A Bothan officer Rey didn't know tried to block her path.

 

"I wouldn't," Kaydel Ko Connix said, without looking up from her station.

 

"This is classified -"

 

"No, I really wouldn't," Kaydel said, as Rey pushed past.

 

Rey got to Finn, and rested one of her hands on his shoulder, trying not to grip too hard.

 

"What happened?" she said, when Finn went silent and sat back, pulling the headphones down to rest around his neck.

 

"Black Squadron engaged a party of First Order scouts, two systems out." Finn tapped his fingers on the desk, staring at it without seeing. "One of them got lucky and knocked out one of Poe's engines, in-atmo. He crashed." Finn lifted a hand and pointed at the schematic. "That's him, with the little circle. He ejected and he's not responding to radio."

 

"You saw him too."

 

Finn glanced over his shoulder. "I heard you see him, I think."

 

General Organa nodded.

 

"Sorry," Rey said. She gripped Finn's shoulder more tightly. "He isn't dead. I'd know."

 

Some of the strain went out of the muscles under her hand. "Well. Good." Finn sat back. "The scouts are toast, anyway. Snap’s now an ace four times over."

 

"Greedy," Luke said mildly. "Leave some for everyone else."

 

"As if you ever did," General Organa said. The atmosphere in the situation room didn't get any lighter.

 

Rey smiled. At least, she bared her teeth.

 

Chatter started up again, and Finn muttered " _Here_ we go," and leaned forward sharply, pulling the headphones up to his ears. Rey stood back and waited.

 

Iolo overruled any suggestion that Poe could wait for a medevac. Snap was flying a cruiser, not an X-wing, and took him onboard with BB-8 and Iolo for medical attention; Jessika stayed behind with Poe's ruined X-wing, her own X-wing, and Iolo's, on the surface of the planet Poe had crash-landed on.

 

They wouldn't be back for two hours, minimum. Rey looked around, and saw that there was no role for her here. Her mind felt stretched, aching outside the bounds of her skull, and she was tired. The Force washed at her, relentless, and she struggled to focus. If she'd seen Poe fall from two systems away - it was a long way away.

 

"I'll be on the roof," Rey said.

 

Finn nodded without looking at her. "You know where to find me."

 

Rey touched the back of his neck with two fingers. _Always_.

 

Finn smiled almost absently, and Rey went to climb up on to the roof and meditate. Luke came too, and she leaned against him, grateful for his strength and solidity in the Force, like one of the islands on Ahch-To, rising steadily out of the wild seas.

 

 

Poe went straight to medical and into a bacta tank. Iolo said he had been responding to his name until not long before they reached Lah’mu, but now he was truly unconscious.

 

There was a lot of blood involved. Rey had seen enough blood in her time, but none of it had been Poe’s or Finn’s – Kylo Ren’s lightsaber had cauterised as it cut – and somehow, that mattered. She groped for Finn’s hand, and his fingers curled around hers, hot and almost painfully tight, as Major Kalonia told them Poe would get twelve hours in the tank, and then they’d see. She thought highly of his chances. But there was a reasonable period of recuperation ahead of him.

 

“Take it in turns,” Finn said, when Major Kalonia had turned away. “Six hours on, six hours off.”

 

Rey shook her head. “You look terrible. You take the first two to sleep, eat, and then we can swap out. Five hours on, five hours off.”

 

Finn grimaced. “All right,” he said, squeezed her hand tightly, and kissed her mouth when she turned to him.

 

“I’ll be here,” Rey said, settling cross-legged on the floor to wait.

 

Finn’s hand touched the top of her head lightly, and then he was gone. Rey rested her hands on her knees, and focused her eyes on the tank in which Poe floated, very still and far too pale. Her hands clenched into fists, and she wished she could reach out for him with the Force, to try to comfort him, to soothe him.

  
She knew that it would hurt far more than it helped. She had promised never to go near his mind.

 

And keeping that promise meant she couldn’t do a thing to help him.

 

Rey’s nails bit into her palms and drew blood.

 

 

Twelve hours, and Poe came out of the bacta, and Major Kalonia said that he was sleeping naturally now, the signs were very good, he was definitely going to live, would most likely recover full function in his damaged leg and almost certainly see the burns recede entirely, and will you _please_ get out of my medical bay?

 

Rey and Finn made it back to their bunk-room and told BB-8 – cleaned and mended by Luke Skywalker’s own hands, after taking an impressive amount of damage during the crash – that Poe would be fine. BB-8 insisted on going to see herself.

 

“You’ll only come back and bleep at the door until we let you in,” Finn predicted, already lying on his bed with his eyes closed.

 

 _Fuck off_ , BB-8 whistled.

 

Rey let the little droid out, shut the door, and trod over to Finn’s bed. She kicked her boots off without undoing the laces and turned Poe’s night crystal on, and then she crawled into bed with Finn, pulling the light blanket up over the two of them.

 

Finn put his arms around her, tucked her head under his chin, and slid his hands up her loose shirt so they rested on her back, warm and solid and grounding. Rey could feel him in the Force, holding steady. It made her think of him sitting at that station in the situation room, managing everything. She had been able to stop, to wait, to leave everything in his hands, knowing that he was in charge. She wasn’t sure she could have done that for anyone else.

 

“You’re really good at what you do,” Rey yawned into his chest, wrapping an arm around his waist. “I couldn’t have done that. With the comms. And everything.”

 

“Thanks.” Finn buried his face in her hair. “You’re pretty brilliant, too.”

 

“So’s he.”

 

Finn let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. “Hell of a pilot,” he murmured, and Rey’s own snort was almost despairing.

  
Hell of a pilot, and he’d almost slipped straight through their fingers.

 

Rey fell asleep between one breath and the next.

 

 

Poe was awake within twenty-four hours, and sitting up within forty-eight, but he was obviously in pain, tight little lines around his mouth and between his eyes, and although he complained when Major Kalonia told him he was grounded for two weeks he was too tired and ill to get more than a few coherent sentences of protest out. Finn, who had already told Poe that if he was so bad at crashing by himself maybe he should take Finn with him every time, was not at all sympathetic.

 

"Y'should be," Poe said rebelliously, heavy eyelids sliding shut, eyelashes flickering as he forced them open again. "You complained. When it was you."

 

Then he made a soft, contented humming noise, and Rey looked up from where she was examining all the non-sentient machines around him to make sure they were in perfect working order. She smiled. Finn was running his fingers through Poe's curly black hair, very gently, and it was apparently soothing, because Poe had turned his face towards Finn and let his eyes close. Rey didn't think he was asleep yet, though.

 

"It's okay," Finn said softly. "It's okay."

 

Some of the tension eased out of Poe's face as he fell asleep again, and Rey stood up and stretched.

 

 _Six on, six off?_ she asked Finn, the only way she could guarantee not to wake Poe.

 

Finn nodded. Rey sloped off to get her appointed six hours of rest.

 

 

Rey and Finn kept alternating shifts until Poe was well enough to stop falling asleep at irregular intervals, and then decided that Poe could be left alone to sleep through the nights, and that Karé or Iolo or other members of Black Squadron might sometimes take over, even though it meant sacrificing the reassurance of having a Force-sensitive person who could instantly raise the alarm with the other by Poe.

 

"We don't want to smother him," Finn reasoned, eating rapidly. "Now he's actually awake most of the time -"

 

Rey nodded, chewing a lump of something meaty in her stew. Half the time she just meditated while Poe slept; Luke had commented that she was far more conscientious like that than he had been at her age, but Rey felt she needed the anchor, and she often thought of what the desert woman had told her about maintaining a still centre, somewhere she could retreat to without panic and consider a question coolly. It was easy to let emotion drive her, if she wasn't careful, and while Rey welcomed her feelings she didn't want to be pushed into courses of action she might later regret by them. And it was hard to maintain her judgement when someone she cared about was at risk.

 

But Poe was awake increasingly often now, and didn't need people sitting like lemons by his bed, apparently doing nothing. Rey was no good at small talk and worse at sabacc; she frequently wondered if it would be more use if she just left him alone, or left him to Finn, who was good at both social skills, except that Poe seemed to be pleased to see her every time.

 

"He's going to get bored," Finn predicted, tapping his spoon against the table.

 

Rey, who knew Karé at least never went to see Poe without a pack of playing cards in her pocket or some gossip up her sleeve, said nothing. Finn had the look he got when he was revolving a plan in his mind.

 

"I think he's run out of Black Squadron paperwork, too."

 

"He'll give himself a headache," Rey said.

 

Finn rolled his eyes. "He did. Didn't stop him." He glanced at his chronometer, and let out a sigh. "And I said I'd be back in Intelligence -"

 

"You should go, then."

 

He grinned at her. She smiled back, and shrugged one-shouldered.

 

Finn dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he scooped up his tray and went.

 

Rey turned her attention to the last of her stew, and thought while she finished it. When she returned to the medical bay, she did so after a detour to her bunkroom, and emptying the hiding places tucked behind one wall panel and under a mattress.

 

Poe was awake and poking at his lunch with a grimace when she joined him, pulling up the chair she’d appropriated and setting down the satchel she was carrying on the side of his bed.

 

“I hate reconstituted protein,” Poe announced.

 

“It’s not that bad,” Rey said.

 

“It’s not real food,” Poe said.

 

“I grew up on it.”  


“And believe me, that explains so much about the way you eat now.” Poe ate another mouthful, and pointed at the satchel Rey had brought over. “What’s that?”

 

“I need your help,” Rey said. “And Finn says you’re bored.”  


“I am,” Poe said, “and Major Kalonia says I can’t even get out of bed for another four days.” He ate another two mouthfuls and then put the tray aside. Much of it was extremely nutritious reconstituted protein designed to be easy on an individual’s stomach, and which bore little resemblance to the cardboard Rey had been raised on. By the looks of things, there had also been a small bowl of fruit, and possibly something sweet. Both of these were missing.

 

Well, at least he’d eaten something. Rey choked back the instinct to tell him to eat while he had food.

 

Rey took out the datapads, the printed flimsis, the notes in her appalling handwriting, just in case something failed or broke. “These are my notes,” she said. “Everything I know about where I came from.”

 

There was a pause. It wasn’t silent; nothing in the medical bay was ever totally silent. But for a few moments, the stillness between her and Poe was absolute.

 

“You want me to help with this,” Poe said, like he was trying to confirm it.

 

Rey pushed a datapad at him. “Yes. Obviously.”

 

“ _Rey_.”

 

“If you don’t want to –”

 

“No.” Poe’s hand covered hers. “No. I do want to.”

  
Rey swallowed, and turned her hand over under Poe’s.

 

Poe tangled his fingers with hers. “Tillira Skywalker, yeah?” he said. “That was her name?”

 

Rey nodded.

 

Poe’s mouth turned up at one corner, his tired eyes alight. “We’ll find her,” he said. He shuffled through the flimsis with careful hands. “My mamá flew cargo, after the war. I know the business.”

 

Rey stored this snippet of information away, and picked up her datapad. “I know I need to look at Olimar. I mean, I need to go back to Jakku, if I can, but Olimar is in a Resistance-affiliated system, and half the ships my mother flew with were from there.”

 

“Olimar?” Poe looked up, frowning. “In the Ileenium system?”

 

Rey nodded.

 

“That’s only a few planets out from D’Qar.”

 

“I know that now,” Rey said a little testily.

 

Wisely, Poe dropped it. “Anything in particular you want me to do?”

 

Rey shrugged. She still didn’t know much about how research was supposed to work. She just waded through records looking for names and asked questions; sometimes they turned out to be the right questions. “I was going to look up some stuff about Olimar. But I don’t really know…” She shrugged again. “What do you want to do?”

 

Poe looked down at the information in his hands. “I can have a look at the ships and cargoes she flew with, see if there’s any patterns that might tell us where to look or who to talk to. If she stayed with a particular mercantile syndicate she may still be on their books. Plenty of spacers keep flying until they can’t breathe in zero-G any more.”  
  
Rey thought of some of the battered people who had passed through Niima Outpost. “I know.”

 

 

Later that day she went to dinner with General Organa. Luke had disappeared, which Rey thought probably had something to do with the unfamiliar but powerful Force presence she could sense somewhere on base, and which she knew by now it would be better not to get too obviously curious about. Finn was tangled up in a complicated question Intelligence were trying to solve collectively – Rey had not been able to follow the expurgated explanation she was given, and Finn assured her that only the one with all the highly classified information left in made any sense at all – so hadn’t been invited, as he increasingly often was. This never failed to alarm Finn, though it amused Poe, who had once been a sweet toddler running around Princess Leia’s feet, and who adapted cheerfully and easily to juggling the fine distinctions between General Organa’s family dinners and her after-action reports with additional food. General Organa simply told Rey that if she (Rey) was rebuilding her family from scratch, then she (General Organa) thought it was important to help.

 

“They were family to you before we were, after all,” General Organa had said, with a characteristic absence of self-pity.

 

Today, dinner meant a platter of cold snack bits and pieces. Rey liked these; liked the variety. They were an easy way to try things she wasn’t sure she would like without wasting food, and an easy way to try lots of things, and they were never boring. Stews and curries and staple carbohydrates were easy to produce in large quantities, but whenever supply lines got stretched a bit thin and they started eating the same thing several days in a row Rey was always reminded of Jakku, and the endless sameness of reconstituted portions. One of the things she valued most about her Resistance friends was their willingness to give her little bits of whatever she hadn’t got on her plate and might like to try; Jessika in particular seemed to take the fact that she just hadn’t tried so many foods that were common around the galaxy as a challenge.

 

Rey filled a plate, and asked the General a couple of anodyne questions about the last few days, and one or two about using the Force which she’d been storing up for an appropriate moment. The General answered thoughtfully, as she always did, and then asked a few questions in return; a couple of little things, and then –

 

“Major Kalonia tells me you’re spending a lot of time with Poe.”

 

Rey, who had her mouth full, nodded. She swallowed rapidly, and then said: “He’s not well enough to get out of bed but he’s well enough that he’s fidgety. Finn says if we let him get bored he’ll be trouble.”  


The General’s face shivered with poorly-concealed laughter, and she nodded equally solemnly. “The three of you are all alike that way, I imagine.”  


“Well,” Rey said seriously, prodding at a piece of salad with her fork. “I don’t crash ships.”

 

The General smirked.

 

Rey ate the piece of salad, and then said: “Poe’s agreed to help me with finding my mother. He ran out of other stuff to do.”

 

“Really,” said the General, sounding mildly interested.

 

“He’s finished his paperwork and he’s listened to all of _The Adventures of Rogue Squadron_. Finn found him a copy of the prequels, but there aren’t that many episodes of _The First Rogue_.”

 

“Possibly because Rogue One died within about a week of forming,” General Organa observed. “Is it any good?”

 

“No, it’s awful, but Bodhi Rook narrates it and he’s Poe and Finn’s favourite.” Rey rolled her eyes, and General Organa smiled. “So I’ve heard all of it.”

 

“Are you making progress? With your research, I mean.”  


Rey nodded. “I think she was from Olimar. Tillira, I mean. Olimar is this… it’s a random little planet in the Ileenium system –”

 

“I know it,” General Organa said, surprising Rey. “Han had friends on Olimar.” She raised her eyebrows. “Which is to say business partners that he somehow omitted to cheat.”

 

Rey, remembering the Kanjiklub and a number of rathtars, grinned.

 

“Do you think she was a smuggler?”

 

“I don’t know,” Rey said, and thought about the criminality of Mos Espa fifty years ago, and her and Luke’s speculation about the under-the-table work Merel Skywalker might have done to earn her way off Tatooine. If Merel Skywalker had plotted courses for smugglers, she might have raised her daughter to the same trade. “Maybe.”

 

General Organa sipped at her water. “Well. When you know more about whoever on Olimar she was flying for, send me the names.”

 

“Thank you,” Rey said, finishing the contents of her plate and stealing a bit more fruit.

 

General Organa just watched her. After a second, Rey looked up and caught her eye.

 

“There’s something else,” General Organa said, with a bone-deep certainty that caught Rey by surprise. She thought she hid her feelings fairly well, even with Skywalkers around.

 

Maybe it was a parent thing. Rey wouldn’t know, and at the moment that felt very bitter.

 

Rey chewed her fruit very slowly, and then said: “What if she just didn’t want me?” She drew a breath that felt raw, and then added: “And where did my father go?”

 

General Organa was silent for a moment, and then she reached across the table and laid her hand over Rey’s. Rey stared at it.

 

“My biological mother died when I was born,” General Organa said, the sharp edges rubbed off her matter-of-fact words by time. “I had Force visions of her when I was a child. Sometimes I still do. And I love the woman in those visions, but she’s never been as real to me as the woman who raised me, and I often wonder how much the woman I’ve had visions of resembles the reality of Padmé Amidala. As for my biological father…” General Organa sighed. “I met him once. Neither of us knew we were related. In hindsight, considering how clear it was to Luke that there was an affinity between you and the two of us, that is strange. As a girl I was taught a lot about Force shielding that I didn’t know was a lesson at the time – but still… It’s possible that his use of the Dark side of the Force affected him somehow. Or maybe he simply had no idea his children could have survived, and therefore dismissed the notion. Luke says he was told we had died with our mother.”

 

Rey held her breath.

  
“He was cruel,” General Organa said matter-of-factly. “He was cruel to me personally, and to thousands of other people. He killed without conscience, he destroyed lives without a qualm. His tragedy is that he was born a slave and his escape only led him to another kind of slavery. His only moments of freedom were the last breaths Luke helped him win, and he saved Luke’s life, but he was still a galaxy’s nightmare, he was _my_ nightmare, and I don’t forgive him. I don’t have to.” Her hand closed gently on Rey’s. “My mother was Breha Organa. My father was Bail Organa.”

 

Rey finally looked up at General Organa. Her breath was coming carefully, in bits and pieces, as if breathing normally was too incautious, and might shatter the delicate stillness of this moment. The General’s eyes were very bright; the amber of warning lights and burning bronze.

 

General Organa sighed. “What I’m trying to say is that you have a family. And if your parents are still alive, and less than satisfactory, you still have that family. Finding them can only add to that family. It can’t take it away.” She pulled her hand away, and laid it back on the table.

 

Rey swallowed hard against encroaching tears. There was a long silence, and then General Organa began a perfectly level-headed and witty critical analysis of the various pieces of media about the Galactic Civil War she thought Poe might not have come across and Rey and Finn might like too, and their relative historical accuracy.

 

When Rey left, she hugged the General so tightly she thought her arms might break.

 

 

***

 

_Rey is sleeping in a tiny camp made up of people who wouldn't call themselves Jedi, dreaming of a fire in the forest - their campfire, perhaps. The desert woman is standing facing away from her, looking up into a starry sky._

_My blood, Rey says. Even in her dreams there are tree roots and stones digging into her back._

_It is a simple lesson tonight, the desert woman says, but there is an urgency in her voice. She does not turn to look at Rey._

_Are you hurt? Rey says. Are you - here?_

_I am one with the Force, the desert woman says. She is turning something over in her hands - carved, polished wood or bone, it glints in her palm. And the Force is with me._

_My blood?_

_Trust the strength of others, the desert woman says. Allow them their choices._

_Rey thinks, guiltily, of her fears for Poe in his X-wing, her worries about Finn, taking on the most dangerous tasks for Intelligence to prove himself._

_Trust them, she says. You mean - trust them._

_Not quite, the desert woman answers. Not quite. You must learn the difference, my loved one._

_For a moment it looks as if she's going to throw whatever's in her hand into the fire, and then she doesn't_ _._


	20. Chapter 20

Rey was practising lifting large objects with the Force by herself when Finn appeared. She set the X-wing she had been moving around down before she could disrupt the delicate balancing act of objects she had in the air or hurt Finn, and opened her eyes.

 

“You might want to put the barrels and those pallets down too,” Finn said.

 

Rey laid everything carefully on the ground, and Finn looked at it all appraisingly.

 

“So this is why people won’t come out here at this time of day,” he said.

 

Rey flushed. She had chosen an isolated area, and the X-wing was very elderly, and about to be junked. “I’ve never hit anyone yet.” This was true; Luke had set careful limits on what she was allowed to work with, monitoring her control over her talents and allowing her to stretch herself without risking damaging anyone.

 

“No, I know.”

 

Rey dusted her hands on her leggings. “Why are you out here? Is something wrong?” She narrowed he eyes. She was confident she would know if Poe had been hurt, or if Poe and Finn had argued; the bond between all three of them responded to the slightest change. And Finn himself looked absolutely fine. She couldn’t sense any unease or discomfort.

 

“I needed a break and Poe asked me to let you know he won’t be in for dinner tonight,” Finn said frankly, sitting down on a crate.

 

Rey joined him, folding her arms and resting them on her knees as she looked sideways at Finn. The simple double braids Leia had taught her brushed against her collarbones. “Why? I mean, it’s not a problem – but why?”

 

“Oh, the First Order know we’re here now, so patrols are being stepped up,” Finn said, quite calmly.

 

Rey stared at him. “What? Are we – are we evacuating?”

 

Finn looked back at her, almost surprised. “No. If they bring the fight to us, they bring the fight to us.” He stretched his back; Rey wondered if it was aching again. It did sometimes, though Finn always shrugged the discomfort off. “But we have them on the back foot. They’re unlikely to try to strike here, they’ll look for a softer target.”

 

Rey kept staring.

 

Finn nudged her gently with his shoulder. “Whisper it, Rey,” he said, and smiled his widest, brightest smile, the one that never failed to make Rey and Poe’s breath come short and that had been known to stop individuals who weren’t expecting it in their tracks. “We might be starting to win.”

 

Rey looked down at her hands. “I didn’t know. I mean, the holonews was good, but… I don’t trust the holonews.” She had an instinctive dislike for the smooth-talking, and after experiencing the press on Chandrila she had doubts about their ability to discern and publish the truth.

 

“You’ve been focused on other things,” Finn said politely. “Finding your family. Which is still important, because if Kylo Ren were to make some kind of desperate strike –”

 

Rey nodded. She’d had a lot of time to think about what might happen to Tillira Skywalker if Kylo Ren tracked her down. It wouldn’t be easy, but after all, Rey herself had found Tillira’s name. Kylo Ren might have managed to go further than that. They had clashed since – Rey spent a certain amount of time with Luke, hunting the Knights of Ren, and that meant risking encounters with Kylo Ren, though he never tried to face Luke in person – but he had said nothing about it, and while he had still refused to press his attacks as viciously as he might have done, he showed little disinclination to fight her. On the contrary; he seemed to think it would wake the Dark Side in her.

 

Rey had pointed out to him that trying the same thing over and over again when you knew you’d only get the same result was the definition of madness. This remark had not been very well received. Rey had got a scar of her own out of that meeting.

 

“-and then there’s your Jedi training, of course, and all your attention goes into fighting the Knights of Ren when you meet them,” Finn was saying, obliviously. He waved his hands and grinned at Rey. “I’m your big picture guy. Here’s the big picture.”  


“That we might be winning,” Rey said, just to confirm it. Finn nodded, and Rey grinned back. “I like that big picture.”  


Finn’s grin turned fierce, a predator’s smile. “Me too,” he said, and rubbed his hands over his thighs. “One more thing. We’re not abandoning Lah’mu, but we are spreading out a bit. More bases. We can man them, now – actually, we need them, this place is heaving.”

 

Rey felt her face twitch. She had noticed that it was busier than usual. The close quarters and the fact that they’d had to organise a rota for the mess were driving her a little mad. While Rey was more accustomed to people and to a life that ran on outwardly imposed rhythms than she had been on Jakku, she was still not used to having her movements constrained by anything other than necessity, like the burning sun or the need to acquire enough portions to survive. She had rewired the key bracelet she’d been given when she first arrived on Lah’mu four times before the quartermasters had given up on her ever using one with a tracking programme.

 

“We’re moving to Tashel Quartus,” Finn said, with laughter in his voice.

  
Rey’s head snapped round so hard the muscles burned. “We’re moving? There?” She’d been on Lah’mu for two years now, allowing for occasional disruptions like her visits to Chandrila and to Coruscant.

 

“You, me – because Luke says he wants to keep me and my Force-sensitive brain under his eye and General Organa says she wants someone to be her eyes and ears there – and Poe.” Finn sat up a little straighter and smirked. “You can thank me later for getting my hands into the rosters. Black Squadron will be going with us.”  


 Rey smiled, but not as widely as Finn seemed to have hoped. He frowned at her a little. “What’s wrong?”

 

She shrugged. “I never imagined leaving Lah’mu. I just thought… one day at a time.” It was how she’d lived on Jakku; _one foot in front of the other_ , the desert woman had advised her, that was how to survive a testing time.

 

Finn was silent for a moment, and then he said: “I… guess there have been a lot of times when we thought there wasn’t much hope. To win, I mean.”

 

Rey sat back, resting her weight on her hands splayed on the crate behind her back, and looked up at the sky. The clouds were gathering again. She was almost used to the rain by now. “I don’t think I ever thought of it like that, even. I just thought that I would fight as long as the General wanted me to. That I’d become a Jedi, and learn to understand the Force, and find my family if I could. I didn’t… I’m not a strategist.” She bumped against Finn’s shoulder. “That’s your job.”  


He smiled, but said nothing.

 

“That’s how I managed on Jakku,” she said. “One day at a time.”

 

Finn put his arm around her shoulders, and tipped his head to kiss her neck very softly. Rey let her head fall back, exposing more of the skin of her throat to his touch.

 

“It’s good for surviving,” Finn said gently. “One day at a time.”

 

She turned her face, and nuzzled her head against his.

 

“I’ll be your big-picture guy,” he repeated, nearly whispering. “Your strategist.”

 

Rey kissed him lightly. “So,” she said after a moment. “Tashel Quartus.”

 

"Tashel Quartus," Finn confirmed, and for a few minutes they just sat there, arms round each other's shoulders, breathing in the same air.

 

And then, because this was Lah'mu, it began to rain.

 

 

Rey insisted on making one more visit to the abandoned farm Luke had taken her to years before, and because Luke was busy, she chose a rest day and dragged Finn and Poe along with her. She also borrowed a speeder, since she felt there was absolutely no need to make Finn and his bad back handle the slippery shale, and since it wasn't a particularly beautiful trek anyway.

 

Poe and Finn agreed to her plans without apparent hesitation, which made Rey feel pleasantly warm inside. Finn also remembered to bring snacks, and Poe let her pilot the speeder, both of which Rey took as the gestures of kindness they were, even though it wasn't a particularly beautiful flight either and the weather was dreadful.

 

Only once they were out there, staring at the abandoned farmhouse, did one of them question her.

 

"Why are we out here?" Finn said, pulling his hood up against the rain. He was frowning in that way he did when he suspected the Force of getting into his work. If he didn't know that it was an exact copy of an expression of General Organa's, Rey wasn't going to tell him.

 

"Is it special?" Poe said, fingering one of the broken pieces of farm equipment.

 

Rey remembered what Luke had said last time they came here. "It's insignificant," she said, and kicked a lump of concrete. The farmhouse looked quite unchanged from her previous visit. "That doesn't mean it wasn't important, once."

 

Finn got the same entertainingly sceptical look on his face that he got when he thought about Jakku. "It doesn't look like it."

 

"No," Rey agreed, adjusting her own poncho, and walking a few steps closer to the farmhouse. "But something happened here that mattered."

 

Poe scratched his head, got water down inside his coat, and made a hilarious noise. Rey grinned. "I could check," Poe volunteered. "See if there's anything in the records about this place. I don't remember Karé saying anything about it, and she did the recon on Lah'mu."

 

"I feel odd," Finn said suddenly.

 

Poe's face creased in mild concern. "Sick?"

 

"No," Rey answered on Finn's behalf. "It's the Force. Something happened here."

 

It wasn't like the Lars's homestead on Tatooine. There were no defined ghosts here, no flickers of memory bright enough to step into. No-one with the unavoidably vivid Force presence of a Skywalker had lived here. There was only the finest filament and whisper of a long-gone past, some kind of tragedy Rey didn't know the shape of, but could sense. Finn, not as innately powerful with the Force and less trained, recognised its presence but didn't know it for what it was.

 

"It was important to someone," Poe said, with the compassion Rey had always liked in him, but had taken some time to learn to trust.

 

Rey nodded.

 

They wandered all over the house for a bit; between the three of them it was possible to move the rusty door without ruining it. Whatever had happened here, perhaps fifty years ago when all the surrounding farms had been destroyed, any physical traces were gone. The place had plainly been abandoned in a hurry, and it looked as if it had been occupied by a family, with at least one child. Rey remembered the part of a doll Luke had found.

 

"Did you know children used to have stormtrooper dolls?" she said. Finn pulled a face that spoke volumes, most of them rude.

 

"Yeah," Poe said. "My father collected clonetrooper models when he was a kid." Poe hesitated. "Things were different, then."

 

Finn and Rey said nothing. Rey scanned the scattered shale and dark dirt of the ground; no more pieces of the doll leapt out at her.

 

"It was over a long time ago," Finn said, soft and low, and his words sounded like a requiem.

 

They ate their lunch in the back of the speeder, Finn with his legs slung casually over Rey and Poe's, Poe telling a tall story about his childhood on Yavin IV. They left the ghosts of the farmhouse outside.

 

Rey didn't know what a prayer to the Force would sound like - all of hers had been born of necessity - and she knew that whatever had happened there really had been over a long time ago. Rey was still enough of a scavenger to say that the dead were dead, and have done with it.

 

She still said a prayer for the occupants of the farmhouse as she began the take-off sequence: the family with the child who left in a hurry, fifty years ago.

 

***

 

With the move to Tashel Quartus came a distinct step upwards in the aggression of Rey and Luke's campaign against Kylo Ren. While few of the secretive Jedi stayed on Tashel Quartus for any length of time, they now began to identify themselves to Rey, and Rey found herself sparring with strangers and teaching Jas and two other young ones General Organa's tricks for meditation and control. She enjoyed it, she thought, more than the running battles with the First Order, where she was the only Jedi on the field and those stormtroopers who had not yet learned tactics to deal with a Jedi were essentially defenceless. There were fewer occasions like that now than there had been, but still enough to make Rey feel guilty - though never so guilty that she forgot or forgave the cruelties the First Order had inflicted on Finn and Poe. She preferred to teach, or to fight the Knights of Ren, who made her blood boil in a way she was only just beginning to understand.

 

The ability to use the Force was a gift, and they used it to torment. It was like knowing where the only oasis for miles around was, and using it to drown people. A waste - a cruel and vicious waste.

 

Rey chased them all over the galaxy in the _Millennium Falcon_ , Luke and Chewbacca always by her side, Finn often with her, and - in a show of faith that made Rey a little breathless - often Poe and Black Squadron, running air support.

 

"Aren't you afraid?" she asked Poe once, in a quiet moment after their respective nightmares had woken the two of them, but (for a wonder) had not caused Finn to do more than stir, easily quietened by Rey's fingers sliding soft over his forehead and Poe resting a hand on his back.

 

They had a small table in their quarters, shoved up against a wall, and Rey and Poe sat there now, their only light the soft glow of the night crystal, drinking some kind of herbal tea thing Finn had unearthed and taken an inexplicable liking to.

 

"No," Poe said, tilting his chair backward, and gave her his sweetest and most crooked smile. "I trust you."

 

Rey covered his hands around his mug with her own, and tried to catch her breath.

 

Poe leaned forward, his chair thumping onto all fours, and kissed the top of her bent head. "I know you'd walk through hell to keep either of us safe," he murmured. "I don't want you to have to. But I know you would."

 

When the two of them got back into bed, Finn rolled sleepily onto his back, half-conscious, and slid one hand up Poe's bare chest and set the other on the curve of Rey's hip.

 

Poe chuckled.

 

"Priorities," Rey said, and caught Finn's mouth with her own.

 

***

 

_Rey lies in the medical bay after a close-fought battle with a Knight of Ren. Dreaming, she can see herself asleep on the bed, and Poe waiting, reading in a chair beside her. Finn will be asleep, then; this must be Poe's watch. The doctors have given up on separating the three of them._

_The desert woman is standing in the same place Rey remembers seeing her after Finn's injury, behind the visitor's chair Poe is currently slouching in. This is a different medical bay, a different planet, but Major Kalonia is a creature of habit and sets them all up the same way._

_Hello, my blood, Rey says. I wasn't expecting you here._

_The desert woman cracks a smile. I like to visit._

_Rey gets up and joins her, running a delicate hand over Poe's curly hair as she passes. In her dream, the cut across her ribs does not hurt, and her defeat does not sting. Finn killed the Knight of Ren before it could kill her, but it had been close._

_Have you come to teach me something?_

_The wall of the medical bay fades into mountains in spring. Rey follows the dream woman into the brightness._

_Only to say this, the desert woman says, that smile still lingering on her face. Rey's hair is loose, washed and brushed out by someone's careful fingers so her head could rest easy on the pillow; the desert woman runs her hand through it very gently, and cups Rey's cheek in one work-roughened palm. Rey turns her face into the desert woman's hand._

_Darkness passes, the desert woman says, with the certainty of ages. It always passes. Not forever, but - for a time._

_The words settle into Rey's heart like they belong there. You've told me that before, my blood, she says._

_My loved one, the desert woman says. You needed to hear it_ _._


	21. Chapter 21

The Knights of Ren burned wherever they went, staining the galaxy with soot and misery and darkness. Rey got used to climbing into the _Falcon_ , setting a course, chasing after them – or, sometimes, when she and Luke managed to cook something up between them, ambushing them. It was difficult for Intelligence to track the Knights of Ren without losing their operatives, and the thought of people suffering the way they did in the hands of the Knights was enough to make Rey turn a little grey and assure Intelligence that they could manage with the information they already had.

 

Rey woke up on the _Falcon_ in hyperspace, after a shift with Luke and the Zabrak spacer at the controls, pulled on moderately clean clothes, and wandered down to the cockpit. It all felt very familiar at this point; almost home-like.

 

“Hey,” she said, and nodded at the Zabrak, who they’d picked up on Ord Mantell, with Luke and Jas in tow. Jas, if the ongoing crashes from the legal cargo bay were indicative of anything, was still practising their levitation. “Hello, Minna. Sorry I wasn’t really making much sense earlier.”

 

That was a delicate way of putting it, she thought to herself. She and Chewbacca had flown non-stop for forty hours before they were able to collect Luke, Jas and Minna, fight off the bounty hunters trailing the trio, and get out of Ord Mantell airspace. Rey had managed to surrender the controls to Luke and stagger back to her bunk, but her greetings to Jas and Minna had been so much slurred nonsense.

 

“No worries,” Minna said easily, leaning back in her chair. She was co-piloting. “You always fly this hunk of junk?”

 

“She’s a beautiful hunk of junk,” Rey said, patting the _Falcon_ , in case the ship took offense.

 

“You know what I mean, smallest Skywalker.”

 

Rey’s mouth twisted in a half grin at the teasing nickname, and she saw Luke smile at the controls. “Yeah, but don’t say it in front of Chewbacca.”

 

“Chewie isn’t Han,” Luke said mildly. “He can hear a word said against the Falcon without fluffing up like an angry zeely hen.”

 

“Not from me or Finn or Poe he can’t,” Rey retorted.

 

“Ah, well. You kids. It’s different from sober and sensible adults like Minna and I –” Luke pulled the Falcon into an easy twist, avoiding some debris in the hyperlane – “having reasoned opinions.”  


Rey stuck her tongue out at him. “He’s still sleeping, anyway. Can’t you hear him snoring from here?”

 

“I thought that was the _Falcon_ ,” Minna said, and put her feet in their intricately laced boots up on the dashboard. Steel-toed, Rey thought. Minna was definitely a spacer. Maybe Tillira had worn a duster and boots like that, and tattoos over her nose and cheeks like Rey had worn when she was pretending to be Emi in Coruscant.

 

Rey averted her eyes so she couldn’t stare, and found herself looking at a small ship keeping pace with them. “We have company,” she said, peering out of the window, and then glancing at the radar screens. Neither of the two ships she could see looked like First Order, though; they were A-5 interceptors, like the one Poe and Rey had borrowed in Hanna City. And the blots on the radar screen suggested that there were more ships of the same size and type bracketing the _Falcon_.

  
Rey’s Force sense wasn’t telling her any of it was dangerous, though there was something nagging at the back of her mind.  


“Friends,” Luke said. “Minna and Jas picked up some interesting stuff on Ord Mantell, so we’re still chasing the Knights of Ren, but there’s a First Order space station near the Knights’ projected destination, so Leia wants to hit them simultaneously.” He waved vaguely at the interceptors. “They came off the _Bail Organa_ and joined us about half an hour ago.”

 

“Where are we going?” Rey asked, leaning on the back of Luke’s seat and staring out into the streaking blue of hyperspace. Neither she nor Chewbacca had been given details beyond the coordinates to meet Luke, Jas and Minna, and an injunction to move with all possible speed. Rey had almost sprinted to the _Falcon_ , followed by a grumbling Chewbacca, who kept claiming that he was too old for all this banthashit.

 

“Jakku,” Luke said grimly.

  
Rey lost her grip on his seat and tumbled forward into the dashboard. Luke and Minna grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hauled her backwards; Luke told her to sit in a jump seat if she couldn’t stand properly, and issued a rapid course correction to the manoeuvres Rey had inadvertently begun.

 

“Is Jakku important?” Minna enquired, twisting in her chair as Rey stumbled to a seat and strapped herself in just in case.

 

“I grew up there,” Rey said tensely, thinking of Niima Outpost, of Unkar Plutt’s easy cruelty, of the desert wind and her AT-AT and the desert woman. “Why are they going to Jakku? There’s nothing there.”

 

“Except someone who knows who your family is,” Luke said, leaning back as the _Falcon_ returned to normal. “My concern is that Kylo Ren may have decided to go straight to the source… as it were.”

 

“But that’s not going to get him any further along than we are,” Rey said, confused. Over the last few months, little meaningful progress had been made on her search for her family. No Tillira Skywalker had popped up looking for Rey, though her surname was now more or less public knowledge, and although assorted Intelligence assets had kept a careful eye out for anyone who might answer to Tillira’s description: a human female spacer in her sixties, with a lost daughter and strong connections to Olimar.  They still weren’t sure who Tillira had last worked for, though they had been able to locate several ships she had flown with in addition to those recorded on Chandrila, and Poe had been able to guess at a career path for her, predict where she might have gone and where she might be working now, based on what they had. Rey still didn’t even have an image of Tillira, though one or two people who had met her had been persuaded to describe her more fully; medium-tall, with fair, freckled skin, a bright smile, and dark hair. Nothing Rey had found, or had been helped to, placed Tillira any time within the last ten years.

 

Still, there wasn’t much chance Kylo Ren could do better by tracking down Unkar Plutt. The papers Plutt had shown her had no holos on, and any forwarding address would be nearly twenty years out of date.

 

“There are other reasons to be on Jakku,” Minna said casually. “The battlefields.”

 

“Stripped bare,” Rey said, “or they will be by now.”

 

“You never know,” Minna said cryptically.

 

“Rey has a point. I don’t see what there can be for Sith in the remains of the Battle of Jakku,” Luke said, looking at Minna. “The Emperor died above Endor, well before Jakku.” His eyebrows twitched. “I was there on both occasions. I thought all his personal gear, everything that might have held power for him, was destroyed with the Death Star.”

 

“There are always more Sith artifacts,” Minna said, yawning and showing a double row of teeth, “if you know which dealers to ask. And it’s very possible that someone in favour with the Emperor might have been given… something… to keep temporarily.”

 

“That’s no favour,” Luke muttered.

 

Rey thought about some of the things she and Luke had destroyed while hunting assorted Knights of Ren, and shuddered. “Sith artifacts can get inside your head, can’t they?”

 

“More than likely,” Luke said. “I imagine the favoured individual would have found that their mind was not their own for much longer.”

 

“Ugh,” Rey said, with feeling. “But something Dark like that can draw people to it, can’t it?”

 

“Generally. If it suits it.”

 

“So the debris fields of Jakku have been covered in scavengers for years,” Rey said. “Why wouldn’t whatever it is have been picked up?”

 

“I don’t know.” Luke leaned forward and examined a couple of the meters, and then, apparently satisfied, sat back. “It’s possible only someone Force-sensitive would be able to pick up on it… or that it would only have a use for someone Force-sensitive.”

 

Minna wrinkled her nose.

 

Luke stretched. “Oh. I have some good news for you.”

  
Rey lifted her head, and Luke pointed out of the window at one of the interceptors.

 

“You’ll never guess who that is,” he said, almost smugly.

 

That sense of familiarity, the tug at the corner of her mind, coalesced into something real and recognisable: a pair of Force presences she knew like the back of her hand, the soft glow of the night crystal, the easy warmth of the jacket, laughter and dark eyes and the rush of flight and fighting. Rey gasped, and felt a stupidly bright smile spread across her face. “No!”

 

Luke nodded. His smile was indulgent as he and Minna exchanged looks.

 

“Of course!” Rey exclaimed, letting herself out of her seat and practically plastering her face against the interceptor to see better. “They’ve been on that capital ship for weeks! I should have known! But why isn’t he in Bl- oh, no, of course, range. And you can’t have two people in an X-wing. Finn must be acting as his gunner.”

 

Luke nodded again. “These interceptors are quite something,” he said. “I should take one out for a spin, if I can manage it.” He turned a teasing grin on Rey. “I’m amazed you didn’t spot them at once. You’re slow before your morning caf.”

 

“I knew something was there,” Rey said defensively. “I only just woke up.”  


Minna grinned and shook her head, and then a loud crash, a sudden cessation of Wookiee snoring, and several ripe curses in Mando’a distracted everyone.

 

“That was Jas,” Minna sighed. She swung her feet down and got up. “They really need to learn when to quit.”

 

“They truly are your padawan, then,” Luke said, squinting at the meters again and jotting down some calculations.

 

Minna made a rude gesture, and wandered out of the cockpit. Rey took her place in the co-pilot’s seat.

 

“Can I talk to Finn and Poe?” she said.

  
Luke looked at her. “Of course. Can’t you speak to their minds, though? Or Finn’s, at least.”

 

“Poe wouldn’t be able to hear,” Rey said. “We try to talk so all three of us can hear. And I don’t go anywhere near his head.”

 

Luke was silent for a long moment. “Very wise,” he said at last.

 

Rey pulled on a headset and toggled the radio into life. “Black Leader, this is Millennium Falcon calling Black Leader.”

 

“Millennium Falcon, this is Black Leader, we hear you loud and clear,” Poe responded. There was a smile in his voice. Rey could almost see it on his face.

 

“Hey, Millennium Falcon,” Finn said, and Rey could hear Finn’s smile too, feel his Force presence calling out to hers, warm and loving. “What the hell is the deal with Jakku? I thought we were done with this dustball.”

 

Rey laughed despite herself, and so did Luke.

 

 

On the surface of Jakku, however, they were alone. The squadron Poe was commanding had gone to strike the First Order station, as a diversion intended to disable them and prevent them from sending help to the Knights of Ren the Jedi were hunting. Rey didn’t know the area where the Knights of Ren were supposed to be – it was far north of her old AT-AT and Niima Outpost – but it had the same unrelenting heat and waves of harsh sand, and Rey felt the desert settle back over her skin as if she had never left. She closed her eyes, and wrapped a scarf around her face the way the desert woman had taught her to.

 

Jas was squinting. Rey wrapped a scarf carefully around their head, and nodded when they murmured thanks. Minna had been forced to abandon her duster, and didn’t look pleased about it. Luke, of course, seemed as comfortable as ever, though grim.

 

“Desert Jedi,” Minna grumbled, looking at him and Rey.

 

Luke shrugged, and raised a hand at Chewbacca, who nodded and ducked inside. The _Falcon_ ’s gangplank rose slowly, with a curious sense of finality.

 

Jas had the jitters. Rey reached out with the Force and offered them a moment’s reassurance. They were very young, she thought, but Rey herself had been very young when she was first forced to fight. Jas had seen enough destruction to make their own decisions about whether they wanted to fight, and it was Minna’s job to stop them if they weren’t able for it. Rey had no gauge on Jas’s fighting skills.

 

Jas smiled at her. Or at least, they bared all their teeth. “You grew up here?”  


“A few hundred klicks south,” Rey said, raising her head into the careless breeze. It was hot; mid-morning heat, unless Rey had forgotten everything she’d ever known about Jakku’s deserts.

 

Jas scrunched their nose up in exactly the same way Minna did.

 

“Luke,” Rey said, her eyes half-blind to the concrete world, her second senses spreading out into the surrounding desert. “I can feel them.”

 

Luke nodded. His eyes half-closed against the glare, he looked even more inscrutable than usual, and he stood tall in a way Rey seldom saw. The Force gathered around him, a tide rising; Rey responded to it instinctively.

 

The oily, foul smear of the Knights of Ren was not far. Rey thought, cross-referencing her knowledge of their presence in the Force with what she could see around her, that they were in the debris where two star destroyers had sheared against each other and crashed to the ground. A death alley of downed TIE fighters, T-17s and attack corvettes lay scattered around them, between the four Jedi and the Knights.

 

They defiled everything they touched. Rey could feel the stain of them on the surface, and it filled her with disgust. She breathed deep, in and out, and reminded herself that that Knights of Ren were not the enemy because she hated them, and that her hatred was irrelevant to combat. She needed to take a calm mind into this fight.

 

Rey looked up into the sky, scoured blue by the vicious heat. She had never been thankful for the merciless heat of Jakku’s sun, but she hoped now that it would burn the Knights of Ren from the planet’s surface. The smile that curled over her face was a grim one.

 

Slow breaths, and centred. Slow, and ready, and calm.

 

“They will know we’re here soon,” she said. Her voice was slow and low and clear, when she was half-sunk in the Force like this. It reminded her of the desert woman’s.

 

“I expect so,” Luke said, equally calmly.

 

“Filth,” Minna said. “Jas, stay close to me.”

 

Jas moved behind Rey, and Rey, sensing their nervousness, smiled at them.

 

“The Force is with us,” she said. “Can’t you feel it?”

 

“Yes,” Jas said. “But I sort of assumed that was just Skywalkers.”

 

Luke grinned like a wolf; like General Organa, with her armies in the field and victory at her fingertips. The tide of the Force rose around him, and swirled at his command.

 

“Let’s go,” he said.

 

 

There were three Knights of Ren. Rey led the Jedi through the ruined star destroyer where the Knights were, working as much from her knowledge of the destroyers as from her Force sense, and raised her lightsaber to engage when they slid from the shadows of the twisted, broken metal, like shadows themselves, liquid and menacing.

 

One was human or humanoid, and two were not, but all three had been consumed by something beyond Rey’s powers of description. They wore black, in this desert heat, and full-face masks it was hard to look at too closely; they moved slickly, in ways that implied more than the usual number of joints, they scuttled and danced, tore and rent at the Jedis’ defences with every deceptively smooth pass. They sought Luke and Jas at first: the weakest and the strongest, Rey thought, breaking in to defend Luke from the two that had converged on him, while Minna and Jas beat off the creeping figure that was toying idly with Jas. But Jas had settled into themself, and fought competently with two lightsabers, holding their defence against the Knight that chose them for prey for what felt like an age before Minna found an opening and put her lightsaber through the back of the Knight’s neck, the sizzling sound and cooked meat and plastic smell of the dead running through them all like a live wire.

 

The Knights screamed, piercing howls that shot through the Force and the audible world like wild lightning, and Rey faltered on the line of a fallen gigacapacitator she had jumped onto for the defensible height. A Knight was on her at once, scenting blood, and then Rey was lost in her duel, allowing the current of the Force to take her as she blocked and parried and sought to press through the Knight’s defences, slid away from a blow and darted in to inflict another. The sun beat down on her, and Rey felt herself grow light-headed; she forced her concentration, and then, finally, glimpsed the tiniest gap in the Knight’s armour.

 

She threw herself at it, knowing that their running battle had taken far longer than it seemed, that the sun was at its height and she wouldn’t be able to fight much longer. She brushed aside a blow that stung at her left shoulder, pushed furiously forward, and ran the Knight through, so close to it now that she could smell its foul sweat, feel the ominously cold stuff of its armour, and when it choked its death rattle it did so into Rey’s face.

 

Rey turned her lightsaber off, and allowed the Knight to fall backwards. She had felt the sickly presence of the last Knight wink out minutes ago, and knew instinctively that Luke had ended its life. The little blood that escaped the Knights’ wounds sank into the thirsty sand.

 

Luke and Minna were now searching the Knights of Ren, very matter-of-factly. Thinking of Tatooine, Rey knew that while Luke had had a loving childhood, he had not had a safe one; he had known death long before he became a Jedi, nearly as well as she had. And she suspected that wherever Minna had learned her ethics, it wasn’t somewhere that balked at going through the pockets of the dead.

 

 Jas was hanging back, looking a bit green. Maybe that was just how Besalisks looked in this light or this weather, but Rey didn’t think so. And looking the young Jedi over, she thought it wasn’t due to injury, either. She had a burn on her shoulder and Minna had an already half-healed cut on her thigh, but otherwise they were uninjured. Rey suspected these Knights were not exactly the best that Ren had to offer; it would explain why they hadn’t been trusted with stormtrooper support. If Snoke didn’t consider them worth it, they wouldn’t be given anything to play with.

 

Rey had a canteen of water strapped tightly to her back. It would be very warm now, but it was water. She took it out, and walked over to Jas.

  
“Small sips,” she said. “And get out of the sun. It’s worse for Besalisks than for humans. The heat will kill you out here, faster than it will me.”

 

Jas drank slowly, as Rey had told them to, and then gave back the canteen. Rey wiped its lip and drank herself. It was less brackish than the water she had grown up on; she savoured it.

 

“How did you survive out here?” Jas said. “Alone? When you were little?”

 

Rey thought of the desert woman, holding her in her dreams, teaching her as she grew, standing in a temple in Mos Espa and smiling in the eyes of children. Smiling in her eyes, perhaps.

 

“I had help,” Rey said. “Do you want to turn over this one with me? I think Minna and Luke are nearly done with those two.”

 

“I don’t _want_ to,” Jas said, and then sighed. “But it needs doing.”  


“Welcome to adulthood,” Minna said, turning a jacket upside down and shaking it.

 

“I’ve been an adult for years,” Jas sulked, crouching and picking tentatively at the Knight of Ren’s armour as Rey knelt down beside the body and began a rapid fingertip search for pockets.

 

“I know,” Rey said, thinking of a ruined settlement in the darkness. “I was there.”

 

 

It was Luke who found the holocron, swathed in the folds of a blue cloth so dark it was almost black in the tallest Knight’s deep pockets. He sighed heavily, and put it away in his bag before it could wake or do anything.

  
“Can you hear it?” he said. Rey and Jas shook their heads; Minna nodded. Luke gave her a weary look, and Minna shrugged.

 

“Try submerging it in water,” Minna recommended. “I find that… effective.”

 

“I don’t know any of the oases round here,” Rey said. “We’ll have to take it straight back to the _Falcon_.”

 

“We need to go back now anyway,” Minna said, casting an experienced eye at her apprentice. “Jas should not be that colour, and we need to burn these bodies.”

 

Rey blinked at the idea of wasting fuel and heat on the dead, and Minna plainly sensed her surprise, because she looked over and explained: “We need to burn out any… remnants, shall we say.”

 

Luke grimaced. “You’re not wrong. That’s not my idea of a nice surprise.” He gave the bag with the holocron in it to Rey. “You three go back to the _Falcon_ ; I’ll guard these. Rey, bring back some fuel, would you?”

 

Rey walked back to the _Falcon_ with Minna and Jas; Jas, wisely, had covered their head against the sun, and was sipping water from Rey’s canteen. Minna seemed wholly unaffected, besides the limp from her bad leg, but she had a light, careful grip on the back of her padawan’s sweat-soaked shirt that would keep Jas from stumbling face-first into the unforgiving sand, and was keeping up a flow of conversation that Jas had to reply to, keeping the young Besalisk alert.

 

Rey left them with Chewbacca – fussing unsubtly over Jas; he was always protective of youngsters – and picked up a couple of canisters of fuel.

 

“Take another one,” Minna said, as Rey stopped to fill a tub with water and drop the holocron into it. “And put a lid on that tub, will you? I don’t want that nasty little object talking to Jas when they’re like this.”  
  
“I don’t want it talking to me at any time,” Jas volunteered, plastering a coolpack from the medical kit over their own forehead.

 

“That’s my padawan,” Minna said affectionately. “Light through and through.”  


Rey found the lid to the tub and sealed it. She wondered what the hell had been kept in here; it was stained like it had been used to hold food.

  
“That’s better,” Minna said. “And I wasn’t kidding about extra fuel. There’s no such thing as overkill in these situations.”  


“They’re already _dead_ ,” Jas said peevishly, dropping down onto the padded benches by the game table and rubbing the coolpack over their face.

 

“Yes, Jas, and the concept is that they stay that way.”

 

“Necromancy?” Jas yelped, springing half-up.

 

Minna shoved her down again. “No, you nerf-herder. Not once Rey and Luke have dealt with them. Skywalkers are thorough sorts. Why are you still standing there, Rey?”

 

 

Rey found Luke poking thoughtfully at a panel on some of the ruins. The three Knights of Ren had been piled together nearby, and covered with their cloaks.

 

“I’m surprised we’ve seen no scavengers,” Luke said thoughtfully, snatching his fingers back from a rogue spark. “Some of this is still good.”  


“Maybe no-one’s based near here,” Rey said, shrugging as she dropped the canisters by Luke’s feet. “I don’t exactly know the geography. And scavengers have good survival instincts. They wouldn’t hang around to say hello to people like the Knights of Ren.” Her lips tightened. “They wouldn’t even try to steal from them.”

 

“Hmm,” Luke said, slammed the panel back over the wires he’d been prodding with an experienced hand, and picked up a canister. He heaved a deep sigh, and twisted the cap off. “Lend a hand, would you?”

 

The resulting fire scorched some of Rey and Luke’s eyebrows off. They returned sooty and sweaty to the Falcon, and took it in turns to wash and clean various injuries – all flesh wounds, including the burn to Rey’s shoulder, which itched. All four of them felt the pall of the battle hanging over them.

 

Rey was sitting curled up in the pilot’s seat, in bare feet and clean clothes as she nibbled on a sandwich, when the radio lit up. She pulled a headset on one-handed, and reached for it.

 

“Millennium Falcon, this is Black Leader calling for Millennium Falcon. Do you copy? Mill-”

 

Rey toggled the transmit switch. “Black Leader, this is Millennium Falcon, we copy.”

 

“Ew, Millennium Falcon,” Finn said. “Finish your mouthful.”

 

Rey chewed loudly and obnoxiously.

 

“Millennium Falcon, this is Black Four,” Jessika Pava said, very obviously trying not to laugh. “Please don’t make us suffer because your boyfriends are annoying you.”

 

Rey swallowed, and put her sandwich down on the radar screen, which was not showing any A-5 interceptors. “Sorry about that. Where are you, Black Squadron? You’re not on my radar screen.”

 

“We’re heading back towards Jakku, wanted to know your flight plan,” Poe said. “ETA Jakku airspace half an hour.”

 

“I’m not sure of our next move,” Rey said. “Hostiles dealt with but there may be further work to be done.”

 

Luke came into the cockpit; Rey updated him on Black Squadron’s plans, and asked for their own.

 

“Well, we’ve got those three out of the way,” Luke said. He frowned and rubbed at his wrist; he had sprained it a couple of weeks ago, and Rey suspected that the sustained combat had caused it to flare up again. While none of the Knights of Ren had been good enough to kill Luke, the two that had originally attacked him before Rey had forced a change of focus had held out too long for Luke to manage a quick kill.

  
“Since we’re here,” Rey began, picking up her abandoned sandwich and idly shredding it, popping the bits into her mouth as she tore them off. “Niima Outpost is not _that_ far south. We could…”

 

Luke nodded. “Although I can’t help remembering that you and Finn said you stole this ship.”

 

“It was already stolen goods,” Rey said, wincing at the memory of the _Falcon_ lumbering from the ground outside Niima Outpost. “I returned it to its rightful owner.”

 

Chewbacca bawled a remark to the effect that that was damn right, and that he had a fucking _bone_ to pick with Unkar Plutt.

  
Luke’s face turned thoughtful. “And you might get to,” he said. “In fact, that might be extremely useful.” He patted Rey’s shoulder. “Get me the coordinates for Niima Outpost, would you?”

 

He sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and put another headset on. “Black Leader, this is Millennium Falcon, do you copy?”

 

“Millennium Falcon, we copy,” Poe replied. “What’s your situation?”

 

“We’re heading south to –“ Rey passed Luke a datapad, and he read off the coordinates. “Niima Outpost.”

 

“Oh, _man_ ,” Finn said despairingly, vaguely audible in the background.

 

“If you’d like to join us you are welcome, but suggest no more than one interceptor,” Luke said, hiding his amusement. “We don’t want to scare them any more than necessary.”

 

“Fucking _Jakku_ , man,” Finn said, apparently unaware that Rey and Luke could hear him distantly. Rey stuffed her fist half into her mouth to stop herself laughing where Finn could hear her.  “BB, don’t you dare run off, okay?”

 

“Millennium Falcon, we’ll see you at Niima Outpost,” Poe said, half-laughing.

 

“Black Leader, we copy, see you there,” Luke said.

 

Luke cut the connection, and Rey gave into her laughter.

  
Luke smiled indulgently.

 

***

 

_Rey sees the desert woman when she's twenty-one; it's been years. She's losing blood, and she can hear Poe on the radio squawking in her ear, Finn reaching urgently for her mind. There are Resistance soldiers stumbling over the battlefield; one will spot her any moment now._

_Hello, she says to the desert woman, kneeling over her with insubstantial hands on Rey's wound. Where have you been?_

_My brave girl, the desert woman says. Be more careful._

_I'm trying, Rey says, and closes her eyes._

_Stay awake!_

_Luke wants to know who you are, Rey murmurs._

_He always was a nosy boy, the desert woman sighs. She shakes Rey gently. Come on, my loved one; open your eyes._

_Rey forces her eyelids open to see Finn's worried face. She smiles_.


	22. Chapter 22

By the time they reached Niima Outpost, Rey had stopped laughing; when they landed, close to the small interceptor waiting for them, she was tense and silent and having trouble releasing the instinctive fear and distress that had once sent her reeling out of Obi-Wan Kenobi's hermitage and now made every hair on the back of her neck rise. Jas had recovered well enough to beg to be allowed to come along, more because they were fascinated by Rey than because of anything else, but Minna overruled them; they still needed to rest after the mild sunstroke they had fallen prey to, and they needed the time to think over the battle.

 

Jas protested that they would be bored. Minna pointed out that this was a scavenger town, and they would have enough to do keeping scavengers away from the Falcon and the interceptor, since Chewbacca intended to go and address himself to Unkar Plutt.

 

 _Fucking right I do_ , Chewbacca rumbled, slinging his bowcaster over his back, and made Jas grin.

 

Rey heard it all as if she were underwater. She took slow, deep breaths, wrapped her hands around the blue leather belt and holster so that the sea-shells dug into her palms and grounded her, and summoned up an image of the desert woman, that steadying presence that had raised her where Tillira Skywalker could not or would not. _Names are currency_ , she thought. Unkar Plutt had tried to hold hers over her, and she was coming to take it back.

 

"Are you ready, Rey?" Luke asked, and she knew from the look in those fathomless blue eyes that he was aware of her turmoil.

 

Outside the _Falcon_ she could see Poe and Finn heading towards them, BB-8 rolling in their wake.

 

"Yes," Rey said, and part of her - the part of her that had refused her lightsaber and fled from the secret cellars of Maz Kanata - wept _no_.

 

 

Niima Outpost felt smaller than she remembered. Perhaps it had shrunk, but Rey couldn't see any significant gaps in the slung awnings and tents, though some of them were not totally familiar: it was possible that the gaps left by the First Order’s attack three years ago had been filled in by strangers. Otherwise, the market was as it always was. Thin beige dust blew over Rey's feet, and everyone - traders and buyers - had a thousand motives they wouldn't admit to.

 

"Stay close," Rey said, and the tide crashed in her voice. Luke and Poe closed in, one at each shoulder; Rey didn't have to look round to see BB-8 rolling behind them, and Finn and Chewbacca bringing up the rear, armed and suspicious. Finn had never liked Jakku; Chewbacca didn't like anyone.

 

Rey had tied her hair back into her buns when she got up this morning, her padawan braid hanging loose. She wore brown and cream, not the dirty white and grey she had wrapped herself in on Jakku. She was stronger and heavier set, well-fed muscle replacing the hard angles near-starvation had ground into her flesh. But she thought, from the stares and whispers and the occasional murmur of her name, that she had not been forgotten.

 

"Rey," Old Manka said in Huttese, standing from her washing station. Old Manka was comparatively rich - she paid four scavengers Rey's age and a little older to bring her parts, and mended them so well that others spent more than they should have on wares that would fail too soon - and correspondingly mean. "We thought you were dead."

 

"You thought wrong," Rey replied in the same language, coming to a halt.

 

Old Manka did not look sorry. "We stripped your haunt."

 

"I have no need of it."

 

"You brought your harem?" Old Manka enquired, lifting her chin in the general direction of the group following Rey. "Or your army?"

 

"I brought my family," Rey said. She looked around her, and switched to Basic. The other scavengers' stares were unblinking; the market was silent, save for the whisper of people shifting and awnings whipping in the faint breeze. Some were smiling, or waving a tentacle gently; Rey wasn't fool enough to believe that they wouldn't take her for a bounty if they could, but perhaps they were also happy to know she was still alive. "Is Unkar Plutt still breathing?"

 

"Do you even need to ask?" Yizik called. "He's in the same place as ever, littlest metal-hunter."

 

Rey rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Yizik."

 

"That a lightsaber you're wearing, littlest?"

 

"Yes," Rey said, laying her hand on the hilt. "I've learned a lot while I've been away."

 

"Clever girl," Old Manka croaked, and laughed her pick-vulture's laugh. "Go away again and stay away, Rey. If you know what's good for you."

 

Rey tightened her lips. "I have a reckoning to make with Unkar Plutt first."

 

"Let us know if you're going to kill him," Old Manka said casually. "Some of us would have an interest in that."

 

"We'll see," Rey said, and pushed through the market. Yizik met her at the edge, his long, parchment-skinned insectoid's face inscrutable.

 

"You've come back changed, littlest metal-hunter," he said, and jerked his chin at Luke, who raised an eyebrow. "Leave it to you to find a Jedi."

 

Yizik wasn't a good person; wasn't kind or friendly or helpful. But Rey could have turned her back on him without being stabbed, even when she was only twelve and barely capable of lifting a staff in anger.

 

Rey let herself smile through the tension. "May the Force be with you, Yizik," she said, and it burned on her tongue like a real blessing. "May the Force be with all of you."

 

Yizik dipped his head, and stepped aside. Rey led her friends towards Unkar Plutt's yard.

 

He wasn't in his booth. He usually wasn't, this time of day. Rey went to his ramshackle, sprawling house, and knocked.  Nobody responded, so she went to the back door and kicked it open. The locks were poor, it wasn't hard, but even here nobody would dare to steal from Unkar Plutt. He controlled too many of the available food sources.

 

Rey had no need to fear him any more. Under her boot the corrugated metal of the door gave way, and fell off one of its hinges.

 

A droid wheeled up to her, squawking; Rey made a gesture and turned it gently away from her and her friends with the Force.

 

"I'm here to see Unkar Plutt," she said. "Tell him it's Rey."

 

The droid wheeled away. Rey let herself into the house, and the others filed in after her. Thoughtfully, Finn picked up a large table and shoved it in front of the door, in case anyone thought to follow them in.

 

The house was dark, and quiet, and comparatively cool. Thick walls and small, high windows protected it from the sun, but the internal walls were flimsy. Rey could hear Unkar Plutt moving around as she walked into his main reception room, the biggest part of the house, where he did most of his business deals. She remembered when this had been an intimidating place to be, the closest Niima Outpost got to grandeur; now she looked at the tacky gilding and attempt at a throne and grand table, and thought of Coruscant and Hanna City, Dantooine and Mos Espa and the temples on Yavin IV.

 

 _You don’t even know how small you are_.

 

There was a sick bitterness welling up in her. Rey tried to acknowledge it and let it go, but it seemed to be almost limitless. Luke shifted his weight at her side, a silent warning.

 

None of them spoke.

 

Eventually, Unkar Plutt strode into the room.

 

“Rey,” he rumbled. “And to think we all thought you were dead.”

 

Rey opened her mouth and found that words wouldn’t come for a moment – and then when they did her voice was high and cold, and she almost didn’t recognise it. “Seems to have been a popular opinion.”

 

“You disappeared,” Unkar Plutt pointed out.

 

Rey nodded. “Maybe I went home. Did you think of that?”

 

“You haven’t got a home.”

 

The others remained perfectly silent and perfectly steady behind her. They were waiting for her word, and Rey took a vicious joy in that that she liked even less than the bitterness.

 

“You have documents relating to me,” she said. “I’ve come to take them back.” Her lip curled. “Thank you for keeping them… safe.”  


“You learned gratitude, wherever you’ve been.”

 

That was the Unkar Plutt Rey remembered; needlessly cruel, fond of toying with the scavengers who depended on him. She tapped her fingers on her lightsaber. “I learned _a lot_ of things.”

 

“Like how to read? Or do your boys do the reading for you?”

 

Rey said nothing. She let the silence stretch, like an arm slowly pulled from its socket, and then she smiled an unfamiliar smile, and said: “Everything you have related to me.”

 

Right on cue, Poe flicked the safety off his blaster and Finn charged his rifle up to kill. The rifle sang a high, humming whine as it reached full power. Rey’s smile did not waver; neither Chewbacca nor Luke moved. Luke radiated placidity; Chewbacca, menace.

 

“Now,” Rey said. “Please.”

 

Unkar Plutt called a few words in Huttese; Poe and Finn tensed, but Rey shook her head very slightly. Plutt had ordered someone to give her what she wanted, not instructions for a kill, and she sensed a droid coming round the corner. The only mercenaries in Niima Outpost were organics. Droids wore restraining bolts, and – in a town of scavengers – droids that were allowed to kill were droids that would soon be dismantled.

 

It was the small droid on wheels from earlier. It carried a datastick, and a small folder of flimsis. Rey took them.

 

“There you go,” Unkar Plutt said, apparently unable to avoid getting the last word in. “Everything that’s yours.” He leered. “Say hello to your pretty mother for me, if she’s still alive. She looked like a woman burning on fumes when she left your skinny useless carcass here. I hope she wasn’t expecting you to die. I’d hate to think I disappointed a customer.”

 

Anger flared bright and hot in Rey, flashing behind her eyes like the inexorable rising of a spring tide. Before she knew it, her lightsaber was in her hand and lit, her teeth bared, her feet half a pace ahead of where they had been before, and Unkar Plutt, for once, looked scared.

 

 _Knowledge is currency_ , the dream woman had told her. _You can use it. It can be used against you._

 

 _Many things can be true_ , Luke had said, and his mouth twisted, ugly. _From a certain point of view._

 

“I kept you alive,” Unkar said, his eyes not wavering from the bright bar of her lightsaber.

 

“I paid for every second,” Rey snarled. The flimsis and datastick had been stuffed into her pocket before she drew; she patted the pocket to check they were still there, turned rapidly on her heel, and stamped away, out of the broad double doors, into the scorching cleansing of the sunlight. She heard Poe and Finn and BB-8 follow her, and Luke and Chewbacca stay behind.

 

As the doors swung shut, she heard Chewbacca growl.

 

_Not so fast, Master Plutt. You and I need to have words. About a little ship called the Millennium Falcon._

 

 

Rey came to a stuttering halt, several paces away from Unkar Plutt's house. Her breath came short, her chest heaving, and the sun felt like fire on her head and neck. The Force was roiling around her; for the first time she thought seriously that she might be swept away.

 

Heavy hands landed on her shoulders and the fingers dug in. "Rey. Look at me. Rey." Finn's voice was low and rough, the way it got when he was at his most sincere and his most afraid, and Rey was pitched headfirst back to Takodana - _I'm not what you think... Rey, come with me!_

 

She shuddered, her lips pulling back over her teeth, and opened her half-blind eyes. She saw Finn's Force presence as much as she saw his face, his eyes wide and dark and worried.

 

"I almost," she said, choking on it, "I almost -"

 

She could have taken Unkar Plutt's head from his wretched neck. She could have blasted him where he stood. She could have taken him apart, and it would have been easy, and some sick little part of her would have enjoyed it.

 

"You didn't," Finn replied, his hands tight on her shoulders, holding her up. "You didn't. That's what matters."

 

Rey took a gasping breath, and then closed her mouth and covered her nose and mouth with her hand, forcing silence, forcing quiet, forcing space for her racing heart to process the dry air she'd dragged in too much of. She leaned into Finn's hands; he'd given his rifle to Poe, who was now standing at her back, facing away from them both.

 

"It would have been wrong," she croaked, when she had released herself. "He couldn't have defended himself from me."

 

"You didn't do it."

 

"I _could_ have done it."

 

"And Master Luke could bring the galaxy down around our ears, but he doesn't. That's what's important, Rey."

 

"It would make me no better than -" Rey stopped.

 

"Kylo Ren," Poe said behind her, with no hesitation or fear. "He isn't evil because he _can_ rip through people's minds, Rey, he's evil because he does it."

 

Rey sucked in another enormous breath, let it out again, and nodded her acquiescence, her eyes falling shut and her head dropping to Finn's shoulder as she stepped into his arms.

 

"It's okay," Finn whispered, his fingers tracing the shell of her ear. "It's okay. You're okay."

 

Rey clenched her fists in the back of his coat, pressed her face into his neck, screwed her eyes up so tightly it hurt. Finn held on.

 

After a few moments, she let go. Finn kissed her temple and released her, looking down into her face as they broke apart to make sure she was okay. Rey managed a weak smile, and he grinned back. Then Poe tapped Rey on the shoulder, handed Finn his rifle, and held his arms out to Rey, whose smile became a lot broader and more watery. She flung her arms around his neck, and pressed against him as fiercely as she had Finn.

 

"I'm not going to turn into him," she whispered. "I'm not. I'm _not_."

 

"I know," Poe said. He didn't sound afraid of her or what she could do; only affectionate. "I think I know that better than you do."

 

Rey tipped her head and kissed him. Finn wolf-whistled, which made Poe smile into Rey's mouth, and BB-8 ran around their feet asking if this meant everything was all right now.

 

"Yeah, buddy," Poe said. "It's fine."

 

 

Luke and Chewbacca were both quiet when they came out of Plutt's house; Luke still and dark and quiet like an ocean at night, his eyes catching Rey's searchingly and only creasing into a small smile when she nodded, Chewbacca ominously pleased.

 

"Did you get what you wanted?" Finn asked.

 

Chewbacca roared his agreement. Luke merely nodded.

 

"Things may be a little... different, around here," he said, calm and pleasant, entirely the Jedi Grandmaster a galaxy went in fear of. "From now on."

 

Rey thought of the webs of power Unkar Plutt held. She'd be surprised if Luke had managed to disrupt them in half an hour closeted with Plutt, but Luke was a surprising man.

 

"Do you want to see your former home?"

 

"The others have stripped it," Rey said automatically, and then thought. AT-ATs were not valuable unless you carried the whole thing off, and the price wasn't worth the effort involved. That was one reason why she'd chosen the AT-AT to live in in the first place. "Maybe there'll be something left. I can show you where it was, anyway."

 

The _Millennium Falcon_ was especially difficult in low orbit, so Chewbacca flew, Poe and Finn following behind in the interceptor. Rey sat in the co-pilot's seat and gave directions; they came easily to her, this path so familiar it ached. It took next to no time before they were bearing down on the AT-AT. Poe, showing off, swooped ahead and landed first. Chewbacca swore agreeably at him, and brought the Falcon to a shaky stop nearby.

 

"Can I come and see too?" Jas asked, coming through from the central compartment.

 

Rey blinked at them. "Of course," she said. "I don't mind." She shrugged. "I don't live here any more."

 

She got out of her seat and walked out of the _Falcon_. The others followed her at a slight distance, but Rey barely registered their presence; Finn and Poe were waiting in the shade of the interceptor, BB-8 rolling around the AT-AT like she was exploring, and Rey headed for them.

 

"So," Finn said, jerking his head at the AT-AT. "This is it."

 

Rey nodded.

 

Poe shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted back towards Niima Outpost. "How'd you get out here?"

 

"I had a speeder," Rey said. It was gone, of course. It would have been valuable. She hoped someone who needed it had got it.

 

She walked over to the AT-AT, trailed by her partners and her friends. It seemed smaller and shabbier than it had done when she was last here; it was showing the years of neglect. The door was missing, and sand had blown inside, but the entrance was in the lee of the prevailing wind and had a lip, so the sand only came up to Rey's ankles. Everything soft had been stripped away, her flight simulator was gone, and when Rey checked her hiding places all but one had been looted. The emergency protein portions, medication and small bottle of water in there would be stale, but she took them anyway, slipped them into her capacious pockets.

 

She could tell, somehow, that the Knights of Ren had not been here. The scavengers had taken her old home apart, but the Knights would have defiled it.

 

Poe and Finn had followed her inside - Finn banged his head on the ceiling - but Jas and Minna and Luke had stayed outside, strolling around the abandoned AT-AT. Rey could hear Minna and Luke delivering a lesson on Force signatures, and the marks that a powerful Jedi's presence could leave on somewhere they had spent time.

 

"- told Rey once Niima Outpost would have her name all over it, metaphorically speaking," Luke was saying. "But if you focus, Jas, you'll find a much stronger impression of her here, possibly because this is a place she built for herself. Often -"

 

Rey tuned it out. It was as strange to be used as an example in a lesson as it was to be pointed out as the youngest Skywalker, and she wasn't going to get used to it any time soon.

 

Poe had found her helmet, and half-laughed. "My mother had one exactly like this," he said, pulled it on and grinned at Rey from under the yellowed visor. "It's mostly complete, I think."

 

Rey smiled at him and lifted the helmet off his head, turning it over in her hands. She herself had stripped the delicate, expensive electronics of the comm system out of the helmet during a rough patch when she was seventeen, and whoever had worked over her home had seen that and left the remainder. "It's almost exactly as I found it," she said, and put it back on Poe's head.

 

"I wonder whose it was?" Poe took the helmet off and turned it over in his hands, looking for the name. "Huh. Dosmit Raeh. I don't know that name."

 

"I made a doll to match her." Rey hunted around, and found the doll stuffed behind the metal skeleton of her bed. Someone had torn the back open, no doubt looking to see if she had hidden anything in the body, but the stuffing was only rags, and could be replaced.

 

"Aww," Poe said, taking it from her, and turning it over carefully. "We'll have to get this lady fixed up."

 

"Rey?" Finn said, at the other end of the AT-AT.

 

Rey took the few steps needed to bring her to his side, and found he was staring at the tally marks she had made.

 

"You chose this place, huh?" Finn said, without taking his eyes off the tally marks.

 

"With help," Rey said.

 

"That woman you used to dream about," Finn said.

 

"Yeah," Rey said.

 

"You chose well," Finn said. "It's defensible. Good distance from town. Close to water sources...?"

 

Rey nodded. "And halfway between a really good scavenging field and Niima Outpost."

 

Finn nodded, and then they were all three of them silent, looking at the silvery fragments of Rey's vigil. Poe had come to stand beside Rey, the doll deposited in the upturned helmet and the helmet tucked under his arm.

 

"Are these what I think they are?" Finn asked, eventually.

 

Rey nodded. All the words were choked in her throat, and the desperate hopes and fears of her years on Jakku rose up to surround her. _Is this what you wanted for me, Tillira?_

 

Poe and Finn put an arm each around her waist, like they'd planned it, and crowded close. Rey shut her stinging eyes and breathed. Outside, Minna was still expounding on something to Jas; occasionally Luke broke in.

 

Then BB-8 ran up against the lip of the door and squawked a foul remark in Binary, and the moment was broken.

 

 _You banthafucking little bastard_ , Finn whistled affectionately, _you could just ask._

 

Rey laughed, and stepped out of her partners' arms. Poe offered her the helmet with the doll inside, and Rey took it, moving out into the sunshine and giving BB-8 a boost over the lip.

 

Luke, Jas and Minna were walking slow circles around the AT-AT. Chewbacca was examining the casing thoughtfully, and clapped Rey wordlessly on the back when she reappeared from inside the AT-AT. Rey stumbled with the force of it, but smiled at him and accepted the over-warm hug he offered.

 

Jas trotted up to her, and Rey raised her eyebrows at the young Besalisk.

 

"You really lived here?" Jas said, and Rey nodded, confused. "For how long?"

 

"About five years," Rey answered, refraining from the temptation to go back inside and check her tally.

 

Jas's eyes were very round. "By yourself?"

 

"Yes," Rey said, for lack of any other answer.

 

Jas was quiet for a moment. "That must have been hard," they said.

 

Rey shrugged uncomfortably. "You do what you have to," she said. "Surviving isn't special. It's what you do when you haven't got any other choice."

 

Jas nodded, but they still looked at Rey like she was some kind of heroine. Luke smiled ruefully at Rey over Jas's shoulder.

 

"Can I go inside?" Jas asked.

 

Rey nodded, surprised that Jas felt the need to ask, and Jas and Minna peeled off to go and inspect the inside of the AT-AT, dodging Finn and Poe on their way out.

 

"Get used to being hero-worshipped," Luke recommended.

 

Rey wrinkled her nose at him. "No."

 

"My stubborn padawan." Luke looked over at the AT-AT, and then back at Rey. "You were very lonely here, weren't you?"

 

Rey shrugged again. "I was alone." Yes, she'd been lonely here, trapped by herself on a hostile planet she adapted herself to with pain and difficulty, with no-one to rely on or to protect her, desperately waiting for an unknown saviour to swoop down and rescue her; but those feelings were no longer as raw as they had been, had been healing over since the day BB-8 had rolled into her life, since Finn had dragged her away from a hunting rathtar, since Poe had shaken her hand in the medical bay and promised to look after Finn while she was gone, since Chewbacca had first asked her to take the controls of the _Millennium Falcon_ , since the first time General Organa had hugged her.

 

Poe and Finn reached them.

 

"Not any more," Luke remarked, and his lips twitched. "I'll be inside, setting a course for Tashel Quartus."

 

When he'd gone, Rey looked at Finn and Poe. "You have to go back to the _Bail Organa_ , don't you?" she said, wishing with a sudden fierceness that they'd say 'no', and come home with her.

 

"Yeah," Finn said regretfully, doubtless picking up on what she felt. "But we're nearly done. Back with you by the end of the week, Tashel time."

 

Rey nodded, swallowing her illogical disappointment, and leaned into a kiss from each of them, sweet and slow and savoured. She smoothed her fingers over Poe's pinkening cheekbones when she broke away from him, and tangled the fingers of her free hand with Finn's even more tightly. "You need to get out of the sun," she said. "You're burning."

 

Chewbacca let Rey fly most of the way back to Tashel Quartus, his solid silence and occasional rumbled curse reassuring in the co-pilot's seat, and Rey lost and found herself in the blue edges of hyperspace. The flimsis that signed Rey Skywalker ( _human female aged four Standard, mother Tillira Skywalker, father n/a, born on Olimar_ ) over to Unkar Plutt for ten years, and the datastick confirming that, burned in her pocket, tucked close against her chest.


	23. Chapter 23

Rey fought. The battles blended into each other, even though they fought across the galaxy, in and out of systems, guerrilla strikes, running battles, and all of it was different – and yet there was a strange sameness to each battle, for her, that she didn’t think Poe and Finn felt. She fought on the ground, with Finn backing her up. She fought in the skies, in the _Falcon_ with Chewbacca, sailing alongside Resistance ships and providing covering fire. She contributed to Poe and Finn’s debriefs, talked over tactics, devised new ways to dovetail her skills with the rest of the Resistance. She shadowed Luke, and helped Finn bodyguard General Organa. She never carried out another mission for General Calrissian, partly because he didn’t need a Jedi, and partly because her face was too well known. There were wanted posters of her now, splashed throughout First Order-friendly systems.

 

REY SKYWALKER, they read, and the reward was a ridiculous number of credits. Poe acquired one and stuck it up next to the recruitment posters of himself and Finn. Rey stared at it as she was falling asleep.

 

“Intimidated?” Finn yawned, toying idly with her vest strap and sliding his warm, strong hand around her waist, the better to pull her close to him.

  
Poe snorted into Rey’s hair.

 

“I could be intimidated,” Rey said, kicking him.

 

“Ow,” Poe said comfortably. “You aren’t.”

 

“I was actually thinking how many portions I could have bought with that many credits.”

 

There was a brief silence. Finn opened his eyes, staring straight into hers. Poe brushed her hair aside and kissed the curve of her neck.

 

“How many?” Poe said.

 

“Enough for at least a year,” Rey said, and closed her eyes, tangling her legs with Finn’s. “Or I suppose I could have bought reading lessons. Found out where I was from using those stupid papers, and booked passage off Jakku.”

 

Finn tugged her closer to him again, and she slid towards him, reaching behind her with one hand to drag Poe into a closer embrace. They curled tightly together, the three of them, and Rey tried to release the resentment that she’d had to wait decades to be this happy and focus instead on the happiness.

 

She woke up in the morning thoroughly overheated, disentangled herself from both men, and went quietly out into the pre-dawn darkness, hoping for a little space to do some lightsaber katas in peace and quiet, without anyone asking her what it was like to use them in battle. Rey had really had enough of people assuming she just carved through her opponents like a hot knife through butter.

 

She _could_ , but that wasn’t the point.

 

Rey still knew so little of her mother. She knew nothing at all of her father, or of any siblings she might have had after she was abandoned, of whom they hadn’t yet found any records. It was unlikely that Tillira Skywalker had had more children – she must have been about forty when she had Rey – but it was possible. And Rey was sure, now, that Tillira had meant her to be safe even if she was uncomfortable. She hadn’t wanted Rey to charge in the front lines of every battle. She would have worried for Rey’s safety, the same way Rey sometimes worried over her heart. Rey was sure she wouldn’t have wanted this life for her daughter.

  
But this was the life Rey had got, and she intended to wring every drop of joy from it that she could. Which didn’t mean she had to be pleased that some people had mistaken her for a killing machine.

 

A small, lethally fast-looking yacht had just landed when Rey got outside. She paused, and saw General Calrissian disembark, followed by Kaydel, who looked exhausted. Kaydel waved at Rey, but went purposefully off in another direction. Rey thought she was heading for the Intelligence wing, not the canteen or her own quarters; she’d spent enough time in Kaydel’s room watching terrible holodramas and learning to braid her own hair.

 

“You’re up early,” General Calrissian said, smiling. He seemed fresh and cheerful and wide awake. “Is it a Jedi thing, or a desert kid thing?”

 

Rey shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t know.” She looked out at the triple moons, low in the sky now; a lilac dawn stained the edges of the horizon. “I woke up, and I just wanted a bit of… quiet.”

 

“Life moves pretty fast around here, doesn’t it.”

 

Rey nodded. For a moment they were both silent.

 

“You got that look Luke gets on his face when he wants to say a thing but doesn’t know how to get it out of his mouth,” General Calrissian observed.

 

Rey almost smiled. “General Calrissian –”

 

“Lando. For the hundredth time, Rey. Lando.”

 

Rey smiled properly, and turned over her words carefully in her mind. “Do you have to like fighting? ‘You’ generally, I mean.” She fidgeted with her lightsaber. “I fight for the Resistance. I’ll keep fighting. I enjoy…” She turned the lightsaber on, and twisted it a couple of times in the air. “I like it. But… I can’t help thinking there’s got to be more.”  


Lando nodded as if everything she’d said made sense. “That’s because there is.”

 

“But I don’t know what it is.”

 

“When we finish the war, you get to work it out.” Lando allowed himself one yawn, which was amazingly graceful in light of the fact that it was a yawn. “Don’t let those boys of yours blind you to the fact that there’s a galaxy out there that doesn’t need you to take a lightsaber to it. You’re sharing your bed with a couple of career soldiers, and your cousin’s a general; stands to reason you don’t see anything else right now. But you know there’s something else, and take it from me – I only join a war when I must, and I know. There is something else.” He tugged gently on the end of Rey’s braid and grinned. “Or what else would we all be fighting for?”

 

Rey thought this over carefully for a few long moments, and smiled.

 

“Good. You got it.” Lando clapped her firmly on the back. “Come and have breakfast with me. I’ll tell you what the galaxy looks like at peace.”

 

***

 

The first set of peace talks were underway when Rey had her chance to go to Olimar. They were secret, and Finn was confident they would fail - they were just tests, he said - but they were happening. Rey couldn't decide whether she wanted a speedy end to the war more than she wanted a chance to smash Kylo Ren's face in or not. On the whole, she thought she did. She wanted to see the galaxy at peace Lando had told her about for herself.

 

With the fighting officially in abeyance, Finn working with General Organa in an undisclosed location, and Poe flying a blockade near Onderon, Rey was at a loose end and annoyed about it. She exchanged long holomessages with Poe and Finn, sparred with the assorted other Jedi - who still weren't calling themselves Jedi, not yet, possibly not ever - who passed through on missions that were well above Rey's pay grade, went over every ship she could get access to, and stewed in silence until she finally ran out of excuses and descended on Luke's office.

 

"I'm going to Olimar," she told Luke.

 

"Colour me surprised," Luke said dryly, looking up from his correspondence. "You've been extremely restrained."

 

Rey shrugged. A few years ago she would have dropped everything to hunt out her family, but she knew the truth of Maz's and the desert woman's words better now. _There is a family for you; the belonging you seek is ahead of you, not behind_. Rey had a family, and with copies of the indenture papers her mother had signed more than ten years ago lodged in her file, she was beginning to come around to General Organa's line of thinking about parents: Rey Skywalker neither had nor needed them. She knew better than to give Unkar Plutt's words more credence than they deserved, but it was difficult to forget that her mother had sold ten years of her life.

 

But she was still curious. She would still like to look her mother in the face, if she could. If nothing else, then she could ask Tillira why she'd done it, and if Tillira knew what she had left her daughter to.

 

"It would be good," Rey said now. "To... tie off the last loose end." She hesitated, and then looked down at her feet and looked away again.

 

Luke nodded sympathetically. "When are you leaving?"

 

"On the slate for tomorrow. Chewbacca says he's okay with it; he's bored, I think." Rey scuffed her toe against the floor.

 

"I can go with you, if you like."

 

Rey's head jerked up in sheer surprise, and she stared at Luke. "I -"

 

"Only if you like." Luke's eyes twinkled, but they were a little guarded. "I know what it's like, to go looking for a parent you have cause to... hmm. Dislike."

 

'Dislike'. Only Luke could have put it that way. What a word to describe feelings for Darth Vader, Rey thought, and set that aside to consider Luke's suggestion.

 

Rey thought about this man who was kind down to his bones, and who could tear a galaxy apart with his mind, and who spent his life balancing those two; she thought about the way he had looked at her, a stranger hounding him in his island hermitage to call him back to war, and instantly claimed her as kin.

 

"I'd like that," Rey said.

 

 

They landed on Olimar a week later, at the spaceport Merel Skywalker's _Clarity_ and several of the ships Tillira Skywalker had served on had been registered to. It was a fairly large, bustling town, spreading out into the surrounding countryside with the easy sprawl of a town on the up. Rey felt it had been lucky to survive the First Order's attention to the Ileenium system, and wasn't surprised to see Resistance symbols prominently displayed; there had been anger in some quarters before, according to the General, anger that the Resistance had attracted the First Order's ire to the system, but that had faded with Resistance successes, especially in the last few years.

 

Rey was curious about everything. As she and Luke and Chewbacca found their way to the offices of the syndicate that Tillira Skywalker had last been heard of working for, she stared at the buildings, many of them partly wooden and very elegant, the styles the people wore, the vehicles on the smoothly paved roads, wondering how much of this she might have known as a child. The papers she had for herself didn't give a more specific place of birth than Olimar.

 

A woman maybe five years older than Rey hurried past, dragging a little boy having a tantrum by one arm. She wore her reddish hair in three looped buns, straggling a little at the sides.

 

Rey almost walked into a small tree.

 

"Rey," Luke called, as Rey disentangled herself from the tree, blushing hotly. He and Chewbacca were standing by one of those part-wooden buildings, all curves and glass panels, set up for solar on the fluted roofs. This one had a sign on it, frosting on the glass of the door: _M A & Son Interplanetary Import and Export_.

 

General Organa had, in fact, recognised the name of the syndicate when Rey had brought it to her. Han hadn't traded with them often in recent years - too respectable for a man whose first instincts were still to find a risky deal to pull off - but during the Rebellion and immediately after he'd worked with them fairly often. The business had been comparatively small then, and mostly smuggling, run by a married couple, a renegade Mandalorian and her Twi'lek wife. The original owners had been retired for a long time - General Organa wasn't even sure they were both alive - but their son still ran the business, and remembered General Organa well enough that she'd been able to request a meeting and introduction on their behalf without bringing up Rey's name.

 

There was a secretary droid at the front desk. It confirmed their appointment and led them to a flat platform lift, which took them past a floor of clerks working and straight to a bright, open office. It was occupied by a stocky middle-aged man with colouring similar to Poe's, but straight hair cropped very close in the Mandalorian fashion and a tinge of something unusual about his proportions and facial bones, a faint stippling of violet along broad cheekbones, that suggested at least one grandparent or great-grandparent who was humanoid rather than human. He sat behind a wide, highly polished wooden desk with an elaborate ship model made of scrap metal on it, and looked up as the droid ushered them into the office.

 

Rey's palms were sweating. She shifted her weight to stand a little closer to Chewbacca's comforting bulk and tried to wipe her hands surreptitiously on her tunic. It was clean and new, a shade of green she particularly liked, and embroidered with black and white patterns like those she'd seen when she and Finn had gone to Yavin IV with Poe. It went nicely with her boots, and the black and white patterned leggings she was wearing, and her blue seashell belt. In hindsight, Rey thought - a little frantically - she might have been trying to impress someone.

 

Chewbacca bumped her shoulder gently. _Relax_.

 

Rey took a calming breath, and tried to focus on what Luke was saying to the man who had got up from his desk, and made a familiar gesture of welcome to all of them. He didn't look familiar at all, no matter how Rey stared. Maybe she hadn't known him.

 

"- something of a research question," Luke said. "We believe it's possible that a person of interest to us was employed by your syndicate when your mothers ran it. She may even still be on your books, in which case we would be very interested to contact her."

 

The man's eyebrows flickered upwards in a carefully calculated expression of polite surprise, and he reached towards the keyboard of the terminal on his desk. "I will, of course, be happy to assist if I can. Can you tell me her name?"

 

Luke said nothing. Rey realised this was her cue.

 

She swallowed; her mouth was dry. When she said "Tillira - Tillira Skywalker," the first half of it came out as a croak.

 

The man looked up sharply and his jaw dropped, and he stared at her as if she were a Nubian space yacht in a junkyard full of elderly freighters. "Stars," he said, very softly. "Stars. It _can't_ be." He hesitated, and a little wariness came into his face. "What's your name?"

 

"Rey," she said, tears creeping into the corners of her eyes. "My name is Rey."

 

His face lit up. "Do you remember me?" he said, very gently. "Irirangi? I used to watch you, sometimes, when your mother was on Olimar."

 

"I don't remember anyone clearly," Rey admitted. The only parental figure she really recalled from her childhood was the desert woman.

 

"You were very small," Irirangi said. "When Tillira lost you."

 

"She _sold_ me," Rey corrected, a little too much snap in her voice. "I have the papers. She left me on Jakku. Alone."

 

Irirangi shook his head, but less in negation than in sympathy. "Come and sit down, all of you. Can I offer anyone a drink? Mija tea? Something stronger?"

 

Mija tea tasted sweet and delicate. Rey clutched her finely polished wooden cup of it, and watched Irirangi as he sat back down behind his desk.

 

"I don't know how much you know about Tillira," he said. "I myself grew up alongside her, though she was older than me - perhaps your age, Master Skywalker. Her mother was a truly gifted navigator from Tatooine, called Merel. Merel came to work for my mothers not long after Tillira was born. Merel raised Tillira onboard ship, mostly, though they had a land base here, on Olimar." He raised his cup to Rey. "I'd be happy to show you. Tillira followed her mother into the sky - she never really belonged anywhere else. She had you quite late, and I promise you, she worshipped the ground you crawled on."

 

Rey's eyes burned and her throat tightened. She put her cup down before she broke it. "Did I have a father?"

 

Irirangi shrugged. "Not that she ever told me." He smiled. "She always said that Skywalker women were too much for the average human male to handle, so they just did without."

 

"Were you never curious?" Luke asked. "About the name? Anakin Skywalker had a reputation as a brilliant pilot and soldier from Tatooine."

 

Irirangi shook his head, though there was something a little cynical in his face that said _and you, too, Master Luke, you have a reputation of your own_. "Tillira and Merel both said they didn't have any family by that name."

 

"They were mistaken," Luke said dryly. Rey thought of the records the two of them had trawled through on Tatooine, those remnants of a world in which families were torn apart and transplanted for a business decision. The Skywalkers had been scattered by time and circumstance. No wonder Merel had no idea a much older sister who wasn't even in Mos Espa until after Merel's departure had had a child, and named him Anakin. "Tillira and my father were cousins."

 

"She would have liked to have known that," Irirangi said, and nodded at Rey. "Merel died when you were a toddler. She and Tillira were always very close."

 

Rey leaned forward in her chair, hands tightly clasped in her lap, feeling as tense as a strung wire. "But..."

 

"She left you," Irirangi said, and nodded. "Yes. I'm getting to that."

 

Rey's knuckles began to ache with the force of her grip.

 

"Tillira wasn't flying with this syndicate when she lost you. It was a different company - they used to be based out of Ord Mantell, but they folded several years ago." Irirangi's lips folded tightly; the violet spots on his face flared. "They promised Tillira higher wages for a couple of short-term flights. Tillira wanted to make up the credits to take some time off and travel with you for fun, see the galaxy while there wasn't a war on." He took a deep breath. "Tillira was shrewd enough, but they fooled her. The ship was poorly supplied, the crew badly managed, the captain a functioning drunk - she got off a couple of messages to us, she was afraid for you in an explosive situation, but she couldn't break her contract to bring you home without incurring fines she would never have been able to pay, and you were too little to put on a transport home from the Outer Rim. She decided to find somewhere to foster you, she was looking for somewhere."

 

"Why Jakku?" Rey's words came out mangled and painful. Her throat was choking-sore, and her face felt hot. "Why - it's a _junkyard -_ "

 

One of Chewbacca's hands landed heavy and warm on her shoulder. Rey broke off, and gasped for breath like she'd run for miles. The Force rose around her like waves, held in the instant before they crashed to shore, and Rey fought to maintain her grip on it. Luke covered her hand on the desk with his, calloused and firm, gripping tightly for a few precious moments of reassurance.

 

"I don't know Jakku," Irirangi said carefully. "Tillira hated talking about any of this."

 

"You are fortunate," Luke said, in that smooth, cool way he had sometimes.

 

"She left you on Jakku because there was a mutiny," Irirangi said baldly. "The captain died. The first mate wasn't an improvement. Tillira was terrified he'd hurt you to make her compliant. So she left you on Jakku."

 

"She indentured me. Did you know that?"

 

"I wondered," Irirangi said. "She was always trying to save money to fly back and bring you home. The amount she was trying to raise was too high for just the tickets."

 

"What happened to her?" Rey demanded, through tears which ran slick over her face and choked her throat, making her words jerky and stiff. "Where is she?"

 

"I'm so sorry," Irirangi said, his face softening with a grimace of sympathy. "But she died ten years ago. There was an explosion in a dockyard off Bespin." He hesitated. "It would have been instant. She never knew a thing."

 

Rey stared at him, feeling desolate and miserable and thoroughly mixed up. Her chest heaved with the short, sobbing breaths that were all she could seem to draw. Her face felt sticky and wet and uncomfortable; her ribs and throat and head ached.

 

"We put out a message for you," Irirangi said, holding her gaze without flinching. "Looking for you. We asked around. But we couldn't find you. After a few years… we thought it was most likely that you were dead."

 

"Until very recently, Rey didn't know her surname," Luke said. He still sounded distant, but Rey could feel his sympathy.

 

"And I couldn't read," Rey said. It came out half a sob. "But you looked for me?"

 

"Of course we did," Irirangi said. "Tillira was a very good friend of mine. We all grieved, believing you were both dead." He stood up and fetched a box of handkerchiefs from the same broad, handsome cupboard that had held the tea, and passed it to Rey. "Have you ever seen a holo of her? You look very alike. Same face shape, same colour eyes, though your hair is lighter."

 

Rey broke. She covered her face with her hands and curled in on herself, giving herself up to her tears.

 

 

They spent a week on Olimar. There were a few people who remembered Rey as a baby, and a few more who recalled Tillira, though Rey's mother seemed to have spent less and less time on Olimar between her abandonment of Rey and her death. Irirangi even had a small chest of personal items that had belonged to Tillira and which he promised to give Rey, and a sum from the disposal of Tillira and Merel's few assets, which he transferred to Rey's account through General Organa.

 

After the first desperate crying jag in Irirangi's office, Rey found herself tearless and numb. She went through the motions that she had once imagined being a source of boundless joy; she took holos of Olimar, of the place where she had been born, of the city, of the spaceport. She made Luke and Chewbacca pose for a picture in front of the great tree in the centre of one of the main city squares, its taproots leaping high above the ground, its centuries-old branches festooned with tokens from thousands of visitors. Rey bought a token, a simple metal R dangling from a bit of orange ribbon the same colour as BB-8, and tied it to a branch she could never have reached without the Force. She climbed trees higher than any she'd ever seen before, except perhaps on Takodana, and sat up there to meditate with the sunrise or sunset. Luke took one look at the handholds she was using and announced that he would confine himself to the ground.

 

Rey felt as if she should think she were coming home. She didn't feel like anything of the sort. She had felt more present and real on Tatooine, and now she was homesick for Lah'mu, for Tashel Quartus, for any anodyne capital ship moored somewhere in Resistance territory, so long as Finn and Poe were there. She didn't know what she felt about Olimar, but it wasn't home.

 

 _There is a family for you, my loved one._ Yes: but not where Rey had always hoped to find it. It was bitter, realising the years she'd spent looking in the wrong place.

 

She knew Chewbacca and Luke had some idea of how she felt by how carefully they watched her. They both knew her well - far better than the people who were so excited to meet her, who told her all the things she had always wanted to know about her mother and her grandmother, who shared theories about her father and stories about her childhood. Rey wrote them all down.

 

Her handwriting was getting better, she thought to herself, and abruptly missed Finn and Poe - who had taught her this, just as they'd taught her to read - so sharply it felt like an actual physical pain.

 

There were also questions about her life now, of course, which Rey answered with a circumspection originally learnt on Jakku, and which she thought General Organa would approve of. She found them fairly easy to deflect, or offer stock answers to, for the most part. Yes, she was a Jedi; yes, it turned out Merel and Tillira really had been _that_ sort of Skywalker, for all neither Merel or Tillira had known it, and for all none of them looked much like Luke or the ancient holos of Anakin Skywalker, Hero of the Republic. Yes, she had grown up on Jakku, until she'd found Finn and the Millennium Falcon and got off-planet. Even out here, where the rumours of her own name and identity hadn’t percolated far enough to reach someone as well-informed as Irirangi, Finn's name and the vague outlines of his story were well known in Resistance-sympathising circles, and Rey could make an entertaining story of the day she and Finn had met and joined the Resistance.

 

The perceptive would then ask if there was something more between her and Finn; Rey told them she was in a relationship, yes, and left it at that. She didn't much like exposing what she and Finn and Poe had to total strangers when they weren't there to back her up. It was too precious.

 

It was hard to answer any question - everyone who cared enough to ask looked at her like she was a ghost and a miracle - but the hardest questions to answer were those posed by Irirangi's mothers. On Rey's last day on Olimar, Irirangi took all of them out to the farm (once a significant distance from the city, now on its outskirts) where he had grown up, and where both his mothers still lived, with a nurse to help. They were unimaginably old to Rey's eyes - the Mandalorian woman still wearing some light armour had to be eighty, or close to it - and alarmingly shrewd. Rey felt as if she'd been seen through, though neither was the slightest bit Force-sensitive. But they'd survived two wars already, and were doing well in their third, from the way the elderly Twi'lek woman cornered Irirangi with questions about the business.

 

Matariki, the Mandalorian, took Rey to fetch the chest that Irirangi had mentioned out of the attic and sat with her while she looked through the holos. There weren't many; Matariki said Tillira had always travelled light, and had preferred to keep more ephemeral digital pictures on a datapad, only taking holos for important people. Rey still felt curiously empty as she traced her features in her mother's, noted a long nose that looked like General Organa's on her grandmother, learned about places the holos had been taken and the people in them that she did not recognise. There weren't many. Merel's line of Skywalkers had been small and self-contained, and it had always looked to the stars, rather than the people in them.

 

For the first time, Rey felt a pang of genuine connection with her birth family. She loved people, but she felt a wordless, visceral revulsion at being treated as a figure of awe by half the people she met. She just wanted to explore the stars; to end the war, and then to travel, take Finn and Poe with her and see the galaxy, without a lit lightsaber and a volley of covering fire between her and it.

 

She packed away the holos and the small trinkets of Tillira's life and her own childhood - a tiny pair of steel-toed spacer's boots, too small to be anything but an affectionate joke; a fine rose-pink silk tunic in a style thirty years old, wrapped in protective cloth; a spacer's lucky charm, smooth where a praying thumb had rubbed over it a thousand times; a blue flannel blanket, worn soft and embroidered in a distinctively Tatooinian fashion that felt familiar when Rey brushed her hand over it - and closed the chest gently.

 

Matariki was looking at her. In those dark knowing eyes Rey saw something of the desert woman, and something of General Organa, but it was an echo of their understanding, not of their selves.

 

Rey smiled with difficulty, and Matariki slapped the back of her wrist lightly.

 

"Don't pretend with me, Rey'ika," she said, but her voice was far gentler than her wife's. "I knew you when you were still small and red and screaming."

 

Rey blushed hotly, and looked down at the closed chest. There was a moment of silence.

 

"Don't think we expect anything of you," Matariki said, "because we knew you as a child."

 

Rey lifted her head. "No - I -"

 

Matariki shushed her imperatively. "What I mean is: we knew your mother, but that doesn't mean you have to know _us,_ not if you don't want to _._ You are an adult, with a life that has meaning. Your foremothers would be proud." She slapped the chest's lid. "This is a debt paid. We are glad to know you are alive, and if you never contact us again, we will not be less glad."

 

Rey closed her mouth, and looked back down at her hands.

 

After a while, she asked: "What does Rey'ika mean?"

 

"Little Rey. 'Ika' is a diminutive." Matariki set her hands firmly on the table, and got up with no more than a muttered Mando'a curse and a creak or two. "Now, come. You need to eat; you're too skinny. Doesn't Leia Organa feed her soldiers properly? I thought she was a better leader than that."

 

Rey fired up at this criticism instantly, and never noticed that she no longer handled the chest as if it were an obligation she didn't know how to respond to.

 

They left after lunch. Irirangi's Twi'lek mother, Amira, accosted Rey on her way back from the bathroom and looked at her with hard black eyes that had seen a great deal.

 

"The galaxy isn't kind," Amira said, tapping her cane on the floor. Rey wasn't sure whether she needed it, or if it was a prop for authority-related purposes. "To girls without mothers."

 

Rey thought of Unkar Plutt, and the rolling sands of Jakku. She thought of fevered nights with no medicine and hard days without food. She thought of a grown woman who didn't know her own name, and a child who cried uncomforted, and she thought of the sweet smile and sad eyes of the desert woman.

 

_My brave girl. My loved one._

 

"No," Rey said. "It isn't."

 

Amira nodded at Rey like she understood her, and straightened an edge of her collar. "Tell those soldier boys to watch your back. There's no gift like a reliable partner."

 

Rey smiled. "No," she said. "There isn't."


	24. Chapter 24

By the time they returned to Tashel Quartus, Rey was tired. She didn't know another word for the way she felt, though 'tired' didn't seem like enough. She felt light-headed, a little dizzy; she worried she was ill. She wanted to sleep for a week, and she spent much of the flight home letting Luke and Chewbacca fly without her. She meditated, she flipped through the holos that had been kept for her by a pair of old women who had never lost hope in her ability to survive, she ran her fingers over the blue blanket as if touching it would tell her if she truly remembered it or not. She slept, and dreamed of everyone but the one person she wanted to see, the one person who might be able to answer some of her questions, and she missed Finn and Poe so badly it hurt.

 

Chewbacca growled at her when she tried to take part in the post-flight checks for the _Falcon_ , and Rey raised her hands in defeat and went back to her quarters. She managed to find small smiles for the people she met along the way, including Snap, who told her bracingly that she looked like she'd tangled with a rathtar and that she should go to bed and sleep it off.

 

Rey laughed unwillingly. "That bad?"

 

"Worse," Snap said, with his usual cheerful bluntness. He clapped her on the shoulder and she stood her ground. "Off you go. You'll feel better soon. Guaranteed."

 

"Right," Rey said warily. She was asleep on her feet by the time she made it back to her corridor, but she could still feel something faint, familiar, and inexpressibly welcome up ahead.

 

Rey didn't know where she found the strength to run, but she ran, and as she reached the door it swung open, and she threw herself straight into Poe's open arms.

 

"Force, I've missed you," she sighed into his neck, clinging to him. His arms closed tightly around her, and he ran one strong warm hand up and down her back, soothing. Rey tried not to melt entirely.

 

"Finn says he's sorry he couldn't be here," Poe said, his voice echoing pleasantly against Rey's face as it sounded in his throat. Rey listened, and heard his pulse sounding, steady and real and reassuring. "The talks haven't collapsed. Yet."

 

"Yet?" Rey enquired, muffled.

 

"Finn says it's only a matter of time, and he's considering assassinating Hux."

 

Rey cracked one eye open, and considered how this would have played out if it were taking place during one of the regular power struggles over oases near Niima Outpost. "Wouldn't that cause the talks to go to hell?"

 

"That's why he hasn't done it yet." Poe pressed a kiss to the top of Rey's head. "Lack of plausible deniability."

 

Rey hummed her understanding, and melted against Poe as his hands continued to trace idle patterns on her back.

 

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

 

Involuntarily, Rey stiffened. She felt the muscle movements in Poe's chest that meant he had looked down at her in surprise. "I found a lot of things," she said.

 

Poe held her away from him gently, and looked down into her eyes. "Oh yeah?"

 

Rey looked down at her feet. Any words she might have used felt stuck and useless, and her face felt numb.

 

Poe tilted her chin up very gently, and kissed her lips, light and chaste. Rey's eyes slid shut, and relief flooded her for no reason she could name. "You're tired and hungry and you need the fresher," Poe said. It wasn't often that he managed to be the sensible one - too prone to wild flights and mad ideas, while Rey had survival imperatives ground into her bones and a belief that no-one was coming to save her that nothing had ever quite managed to erase, and Finn had discipline etched into the beat of his pulse - but this time he spoke with an authority that reminded Rey he'd been fighting for a lot longer than she'd even known there was a war.

 

"I can't stand the mess," Rey admitted. "Not now."

 

Poe shook his head. "No, I mean - you wash, and I'll go and get you something from the mess. And then we can set up a holocall with Finn, he said he'd keep this evening free for us somehow."

 

Rey swayed back against him, and leaned her head against his chest. "Thank you," she sighed.

 

The fresher was sonic - Rey preferred water, a luxury she could never have imagined three years ago - but it was far more efficient than the wonky one on the Falcon, and it felt so good to be properly clean, Rey almost couldn't bring herself to change into pyjamas. She found a clean pair, loose shorts that had originally been Finn's and a shirt looted from Poe's teenage wardrobe still preserved on Yavin IV, and pulled them on. When Poe came back, toeing the door open with one boot and dexterously sliding inside with an overloaded tray, she was sitting on the bunk braiding her newly washed and combed hair.

 

Rey didn't actually feel hungry, and didn't want to eat, which surprised her. Normally she ate whenever food was put in front of her, whatever it was, and Poe had managed to collect a large number of her favourites. She sat on the bunk with Poe, the tray between them, and picked at the food until she'd managed to eat the equivalent of a small meal. Poe looked carefully at her when she stopped eating, but didn't comment.

 

BB-8, whose original response to Rey's arrival had been so excitable it had startled a laugh from her, sat in a corner whirring quietly as it tried to find a connection between the Tashel Quartus and Finn's location, bouncing back and forth between transmission posts to prevent tracing. Poe set the tray aside on the small side table, shifting the night crystal casually out of the way, and looked at Rey in silence.

 

After a moment, she let out a long, defeated sigh, and shifted closer towards him. "I need to feel held," she said, with some difficulty; it was always hard for her to express needs that weren't actually about staying alive aloud, and it would have been easier if she could have spoken straight to Poe's mind, but that was permanently off-limits.

 

She could feel the surprise coming off him, though. Rey had always needed space, an escape route; needed wriggle room to move away or access to the clear side of the bunk. But he didn't question it, merely swung his legs onto the bed and settled his back against the wall, holding his arms open to her. Rey crawled into his embrace, resting her head on the flat of his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his back, and Poe rested his arms loosely around her waist and bent his head to hers. Rey let herself relax.

 

After another long silence, Poe said: "What did you find?"

 

"My mother's dead," Rey said.

 

"I'm sorry."

 

"Ten years ago. There was an explosion." Rey paused again. "They said she wouldn't have felt anything. I think they were telling the truth." She licked her lips and took in a shuddering breath. "She indentured me... she... because..."

 

Poe waited for her to finish the sentence, and then, when she didn't, said very gently: "Do you want to wait until we get Finn on the line?"

 

Rey shook her head; having started, she was going to finish. She forced the words out. "She didn't have a choice. She was on a crew that was falling apart. She wanted me to be safe. And at least on Jakku I wasn't _dead_."

 

Tillira had been the daughter of a slave. Rey was sure her mother had had no illusions about the safety of the life she was leaving Rey to. But Rey was also sure that Tillira had been able to calculate that as long as Rey was valuable to Unkar Plutt, and under the terms of the indenture she was, Rey would be kept alive. Tillira hadn't been able to guarantee that for her daughter any other way, so she'd taken the risk.

 

Poe's fingers curled against her back; she felt his lips on the shell of her ear, soft and thoughtful.

 

"I," Rey said, and BB-8 chirped a triumphant and foul-mouthed string of bad words that made both her and Poe jump.

 

"Hey guys!" Finn said, tinny but cheerful, and when Rey twisted abruptly and sat up, elbowing Poe in the stomach and knocking his chin with her head, causing him to swear - she saw Finn waving at them, blue with a poor-quality holocall but smiling so brightly it made Rey's heart ache. "Glad to see you're getting comfortable." His grin turned from cheeky to warm and loving, and Rey smiled tremulously back. " _Rey_. Sweetheart, we missed you."

 

Rey sniffled, and wiped her nose on her wrist. "I missed you too." She felt Poe sit up behind her, and his arm snaked back round her waist. She leaned back into him.

 

"We've only got a few minutes," Finn said regretfully. "The call might get intercepted otherwise."

 

Rey nodded, and controlled her disappointment. It wasn't rational; she'd known that, it was an obvious fact of encrypted holocalls.

 

"Did you like Olimar?" Finn said, not hesitantly but carefully. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

 

Rey thought about what she'd gone looking for: some certainty, some closure, the confidence that she had done all she could for her family, and everything else was up to them. She hesitated, and then nodded slowly. "I found... people who knew my mother. I found pictures of her." She swallowed past a lump in her throat. "She's... dead. Yes." Poe's arm around her waist tightened; Rey turned her face against his neck for a second.

 

"I'm sorry, Rey. I hoped..." Finn hesitated, then shook his head. "Never mind."

 

Rey nodded. She knew what he meant. "I found... a reason. Why she did what she did. Leaving me." The lump in her throat had gone from the size of a Torbin nut to a gigacapacitor all of a sudden; Rey forced her breath past it. "She didn't have a _choice_. It was - it was the safest thing she could do."

 

All Rey's memories of the hardest days and harder nights on Jakku poured in on her. The days when she had felt abandoned and without hope, the burning sun, the freezing cold; sickness, near-starvation, scummy water, learning to fight with bitter bruises and gashes on her shins and forearms that threatened to fester. The nights when she feared even the desert woman had left her to her own devices, and when she struggled to believe in a future.

 

Rey let out a sob, and then began to cry again. "It was the safest thing she could do," she repeated, "the safest thing, and I hate that, _I hate that_ -"

 

Finn looked horrified. She could hear him talking to her, hear Poe speaking, but she couldn't pick out a word. She curled in on herself and let herself cry, all the emotion she had somehow pent up while on Olimar flooding out of her. Poe released his grip on her, and laid one anchoring hand on her back instead.

 

"- I love you," Finn was saying - and it wasn't the first time he'd said it, going by the look on his face as Rey wiped her streaming eyes, the better to see him clearly. "We love you, okay, Rey? I'll be home soon."

 

"I lo-" Rey choked, wiped her nose, and repeated more clearly: "I love you too. Don't kill Hux unless you get a good opening, okay?"

 

Finn chuckled, despite the worried crease between his eyebrows. "Okay."

 

The holocall ended, and Rey hiccuped, and let the tears keep falling. Poe pulled her braid out gently, and combed his fingers through her hair until she came to a stop, when he helped her move under the blanket and tucked a pillow under her head. He disappeared for a moment, and Rey made an unhappy noise, but then she felt a cool damp flannel moving over her overheated face, wiping away the sticky, uncomfortable residue of her tears, and sighed with relief. Eyes shut, she groped blindly for Poe's hand, and curled her fingers around his own.

 

There was a noise outside, someone hurrying, and Rey frowned when she recognised Luke's Force presence. She heard a knock, and struggled to rise; Poe pushed her down gently with a hand on the centre of her chest, and got up with a creak of the bedsprings to see to it himself.

 

Dimly, Rey heard the door creak open, and Luke talking quietly.

 

"-intense distress," she caught, "I came as soon as I could -"

 

"She's okay," Poe replied. "I mean, she's not happy, but I think she'll be okay, she just needed to get it out."

 

"It does seem... quieter now," Luke agreed, and then there were a few more moments of murmured discussion, and then the sound of the door closing, Rey's faint awareness of the lights dimming.

 

She heard rustling as Poe took off his trousers and shirt and belt, a clinking and soft fabric thump as these things fell to the floor. Rey shifted over as he came to join her in bed, waiting until he'd got under the covers before pressing against him and tangling her legs with his.

 

"She didn't have a choice," Rey whispered again, suddenly desperate to get this out. "I hate that."

 

Poe turned onto his back and pulled her with him, so she lay half across his chest. "I know, _corazón_ ," he said, very sadly. "I know."

 

Rey spent a difficult several hours talking to Luke about it the next day, and stuck close to Poe and to her room and to the Falcon, where Chewbacca didn't try to talk to her about anything much, just gave her things to do and swore when things went wrong. Slowly, Rey began to feel less raw, less despairingly miserable, and managed to start spending time in the mess, regardless of the number of people there and the noise.

 

"Where were you?" Iolo asked, the evening before a rest day, when everyone was sitting around a fire on one of the flat roofs, drinking companionably. "I mean -" he waggled the fingers of the hand that wasn't securely wrapped around the neck of a bottle - "you and Finn are always off on super-secret missions, leaving us to console a forlorn Dameron -"

 

Everyone laughed. Poe made a rude gesture at Iolo, and Rey spared a moment to admire the way he managed to seem entirely relaxed while being ready to step in and deflect for her the moment she asked him to.

 

Rey leaned back into Poe's shoulder. "Jedi business," she said, and grinned. Both statement and expression felt true.

 

 

Finn returned early in the morning the next day. Rey felt him coming as soon as the ship he was on entered orbit, and dragged a querulous Poe out of bed to go and meet him.

 

 _This is home_ , she thought to herself, tangled up in a laughing, vibrant knot of the two people she loved the best in the galaxy, BB-8 whirling crazily around their feet, half the Resistance smiling at them, General Organa shaking her head at them affectionately. _This is where I'm supposed to be._

 

_There is a family for you, my loved one._

 

Rey caught Finn's eye, and knew he knew what she was thinking.

 

 _I know what I'm going to do at the end of the war_ , she said, just between the two of them.

 

 _Give people like your mother other choices_ , Finn responded immediately. _Am I right?_

 

Rey smiled so hard her face hurt, and wolf-whistled as Finn bent Poe back into a melodramatic kiss.

 

***

 

_There is nothing special about the evening when the desert woman comes to Rey when she is seventeen - - except that she sees the desert woman so seldom now that every occasion is special. Rey wakes lying on a sandy beach, among ruined metal and bent trees with feathery leaves; the dream woman is standing in water up to her ankles with her skirts held up, watching the sea wash over her feet._

_Rey sits up. My blood, she says._

_My loved one, the desert woman says, glancing back at her. The sun is bright; Rey squints into it and sees the glittering edge of a smile. Why the despair?_

_Rey thinks of the secret worries she's been nursing - that her family won't come back, that she will die alone and unmourned, that she will miss them by some unlucky chance. They consume her waking life, lately. It is lucky, in a way, that she has to work every minute she can, otherwise she would have too much time to think about them. They claw at the edges of her mind as it is._

_All sorts of reasons, she says._

_Darkness will pass, the desert woman says. Thoughtfully, she lets her skirts down into the water; the edges soak and flutter with the moving of the waves. It always passes, my loved one._

_How do I know that? Rey says, almost amused._

_Believe it, the desert woman says. You'll see_ _._


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Kylo Ren's fate in this chapter - whether his final actions were intentional or not - is ambiguous.

Finn came back from the talks with two distinct frown lines between his brows and shadows in his eyes. He refused to acknowledge either until he had semi-casually produced a chip with a holofilm Poe had been wanting to show them but hadn’t been able to find an uncorrupted copy of, handed Rey two snacks she’d never tried and two she knew she liked, and spent a quiet, warm evening in a nest of blankets, just the three of them and the holo and a steady food supply.

 

Rey knew Finn was spoiling them on purpose - knew from the anxious line of Finn’s mouth and the way his fingers stroked her hair behind her ears that she was being made a particular fuss of - and she didn’t mind, any more than Poe did. It was a relief, after the bone-rattling catharsis of her breakdown in front of Poe, to curl against Finn’s chest and be held, to be given all the little things she liked to make her smile. Finn was the first living person Rey could remember comforting her, and his arms were still the safest place she knew.

It was obvious Poe felt similarly; when Finn let her go and turned to Poe, Rey saw Poe sink into Finn’s embrace like he wanted to live there, and that was another one of those little things that made Rey smile.

 

Rey still knew so little of her blood mother and grandmother, but she thought they would have liked her men. She hoped, anyway. Finn knew escape and Poe knew the stars, and they both loved her: maybe that would have been enough for Merel and Tillira. It was certainly enough for Rey, finding a smile back on her face, feeling the exhaustion that had overtaken her after her catharsis ebb away.

 

But - she wanted to wipe away those two lines between Finn’s brows. They disappeared for short periods, when Poe cracked a joke and Finn laughed, or when Rey showed him the things she had brought home from Olimar, but they never left for longer than a few minutes. They spoke of a worry Finn insisted on carrying by himself, at least until Rey felt more stable, but she was more stable now and he still wasn’t talking.

 

Rey colluded with Poe, shut BB-8 out of the room, and cornered Finn after a breakfast in bed that had spread so many crumbs and so much sauce around they would need to change the sheets.

 

“Tell us,” Rey said. “What happened?”

 

Finn stared at her for a moment, and then sighed and ran his hands over his head, skull dipping like it was too heavy for his neck. “The talks? They fell through.”

 

Poe sat back down on the bed, crossing his legs. “You were expecting that, though.”

 

Finn nodded. “But…” He grimaced, and those two lines deepened. Rey, who was still standing, leaned against his shoulder where he sat on the bed, and he wrapped an arm around her hips, pressed an absent kiss to her waist. “It’s Hux who’s the real problem. The worst hold-out. And he used to -” He looked over at Poe. “He used to be a pragmatist. All in for the First Order, yeah. He bled black and red. But he was practical.”

 

Poe tilted his head. “And he’s changed?”

 

“He’s become a fanatic.” Finn sighed. “He looked through me, throughout the talks. I stood right in front of him and he never admitted I existed. And he spat at General Organa.”

 

Rey felt her hand on Finn’s other shoulder grip too tightly, sudden and sharp, and forced herself to relax.

 

“ _Banthafucking_ -” Poe cut himself off mid-snarl, dark eyes snapping with anger. “What did she do?”

 

“Stopped it in midair and dropped it at his feet.” Finn rubbed a circle on Rey’s hipbone, over her clothes. “His eyes are bloodshot as hell and he’s thinner, and he feels Dark in a way I don’t remember from before. Maybe he’s been given a Sith artefact or something - like the one you dug up on Jakku, Rey.”

 

Rey nodded.

 

“Losing is killing him,” Finn said matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t care - he did us more good than he realised, there weren’t as many people who were willing to associate themselves with him, he made them look unreasonable - but…”

 

Poe leaned back against the wall and re-crossed his legs the other way. “He’s cornered,” he said baldly. “Cornered people are dangerous.”

 

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Rey asked Finn. “Have you seen anything in the Force?”

 

Finn shook his head. Unlike her, he did occasionally see the future, but not consistently or usefully: it would have been too much to hope that this time he had seen the next outbreak of fighting. “Nothing. And I don’t know. But he’s going to do something, and he still controls a significant proportion of the First Order’s troopers and destroyers - and whatever Snoke’s done with the Knights of Ren lately, Kylo Ren at least will be where Hux is.”

 

“Does the General know what you think?” Poe asked, and Finn nodded. “Then.” Poe rose to his knees, and clambered over to where Finn sat with Rey. “You’ve done what you can. Relax.”

 

“I just have a bad feeling about this,” Finn said, tilting his face into Poe’s kiss with the ease of long practice and pulling Rey sideways onto the bed with them.

 

“You had better mean Hux,” Rey said, tumbling straight into Poe’s lap and settling in.

 

“Do you have to talk about Hux when we’re in bed?” Poe demanded, sounding put-upon. One hand landed in the dip of her spine and pulled her comfortably against him.

 

“No,” Rey said, and kissed Finn instead.

 

 

The sheets were ruined. Rey had never seen a laundry droid look quite so judgemental.

 

 

***

 

Rey was flying the _Millennium Falcon_ in a convoy headed towards newly consolidated Resistance territory, guarding the starboard van with X-wings and A-5s holding steady in their protective pattern around the capital ship and destroyers of the fleet, when something _wrong_ burst in on her and she clutched at the controls.

 

"Finn!" she shouted, but Finn had felt it too - not merely the echo of it, transmitted through Rey, but the oily, corrosive foulness that Rey now recognised instantly as the signature of the Knights of Ren, and the malevolent, unstable presence of Kylo Ren himself. Even as Rey shouted, she'd heard the clatter of Finn's datapad flying from the desk in the central compartment, and Finn himself scrambling for the guns, his boots ringing hard on the floor.

 

 _I knew it,_ she heard him thinking, _I knew it, I **knew** it -_

 

 _What the banthafucking shit is this?_ howled Chewbacca, as TIEs screamed out of hyperspace and the X-wings responded. He peeled away from one TIE fighter on a collision course with them, twisting the _Falcon_ neatly to give Finn a perfect shot from the cannons, and Rey felt the tiny spark of life in the exploding TIE snuff out.

 

"Ambush!" Rey said. "It must be!" She scrabbled for the comm line while Chewbacca swore an impressively fluent litany of curses and hiked the shields up to maximum. "We were supposed to go to hyperspace in half a - Force _almighty_!"

 

Chewbacca bawled something more profane and took evasive action from the immense First Order destroyer that had just appeared, forcing the convoy to split apart and the capital ship to throw hard over to port to avoid a collision. Rey thought, with sudden fear, of Luke and General Organa onboard the capital ship, which would never be able to evade a destroyer, let alone one of that size; vulnerable, in a place where they would never surrender or run from.

 

She took a deep breath. _Think about why you feel_ , she reminded herself, and trusted her teachers and cousins, veterans of two wars, one won and the other almost won, to take care of themselves. She punched the button for transmit.

 

"Priority priority. _Bail Organa_ this is _Millennium Falcon_ calling _Bail Organa_." She swallowed. "Priority prio-"

 

" _Millennium Falcon_ , this is _Bail Organa_ , what's your priority?"

 

Rey didn't recognise the voice of the officer who answered, sounding harried and afraid, but she responded as if it had been Kaydel or Poe on the other end of the line. " _Bail Organa_ this is Rey Skywalker confirming presence of multiple Knights of Ren including Kylo Ren. _Millennium Falcon_ holding position returning fire but I need orders from Master Skywalker."

 

“ _Millennium Falcon_ , hold your position, stand ready to receive orders.”

 

“ _Bail Organa_ , will do, over.” Rey settled back into her seat and surveyed the battlefield. Formerly empty black space had become infested with the enormous destroyer, a single smaller one, and many TIE fighters, as well as some larger fighters built on a similar pattern to the A-5 interceptors. When Rey focused, she knew that three of the Knights of Ren were in interceptors, neither of them flying: she suspected they were trying to get close enough to use the Force against the Resistance’s destroyers or the people on them. There was one on the immense First Order destroyer, and Kylo Ren himself was in an interceptor. Rey knew he was a good pilot, though only as good as the ship he flew; she had once chased him in an X-wing through the gas flare canyons of Bestine, and had failed to catch him. She knew he was now attacking one of the Resistance’s destroyers, and doing a very poor job of integrating into the flight squadron he was part of; she could see him, a beat out of sync with the rest of them. Hopefully he would miscalculate and blow himself up into the unforgiving vacuum of outer space.

 

The Resistance was distinctly on the back foot; although they had greater firepower, they had civilians and a large, slow moving ship that couldn’t go to hyperspace in the space available to protect. Rey, Chewbacca and Finn were drawing fire in their highly recognisable ship, but they couldn’t seek aid from the X-wing and A-5 squadrons, who were trying to protect the comparatively vulnerable capital ship; the heavily-armed destroyers were trying to provide some sort of shield, but they were forced to engage the First Order’s destroyers in order to spare the capital ship the destroyers’ fire, and were already taking significant damage. Rey knew the shielding capabilities of the _Bail Organa_ down to the last picometre, and she knew that the capital ship could resist sustained fire, but had almost nothing to fire back with – and when the shields were gone, they were gone.

 

The _Falcon_ took a hit that made the entire ship judder, and all three of them swore violently in various languages.

 

“I didn’t even _see_ them!” Finn yelled into his headset. “They came out of _nowhere_!”

 

“We’re too exposed!” Rey shifted into the pilot’s seat to take control as Chewbacca leapt up to attend to a screeching warning siren. “Where the –” The radar shrieked as the interceptor that had landed the hit zoomed overhead, and in a split millisecond Rey recognized the unnatural blankness of someone shielding their entire self in the Force and hauled the Falcon over, exposing the interceptor to Finn’s cannons, barely hearing the sound of Chewbacca howling as he hit the ceiling. _Fire!_ she called to Finn, half instinct, and Finn didn’t hesitate. The interceptor exploded, debris hitting the Falcon with multiple tiny clangs and crashing noises, and Finn and Rey’s fierce joy ran back and forth along their shared bond as Rey turned the Falcon right side up.

 

The warning siren stopped. Chewbacca bawled that he’d like some fucking warning next time, thank you very fucking much.

 

Rey laughed breathlessly, and told Finn to open fire on the TIEs harrying Snap just ahead of them, flicking open the comms to warn Snap to hold steady.

 

“Thanks, Falcon!” Snap laughed, and Rey could hear adrenaline in his voice as Finn took out the TIEs, one after another. “Leave some for the rest of us!”

 

“No problem,” Rey said, shifting back as Chewbacca returned to the pilot’s seat, and turning her attention to rerouting power from the hyperdrive which they couldn’t use yet to the shields and cannons, which they sorely needed.

 

 _Rey_ , Luke said, directly to her mind, and Rey smiled at nothing. _Kylo Ren is here._

 

_I know. One Knight of Ren down, four to go._

 

 _Engage them directly if you can._ Luke sounded strained; Rey wondered what the hell he was doing that drew so heavily on his resources. _There are Knights of Ren trying to enter the minds of the officers here and I have all I can do protecting them. I need you to distract the Knights._

 

Rey swallowed hard at the thought of spreading mental resources thin enough to shield the bridge and artillery officers of an entire capital ship, everyone whose mind might be turned against them for long enough to damage the ship and leave it open to the First Order’s fire. And then, of course, the Knights might decide to try attacking individual fighters to force them into unwilling suicide missions – and there was no way that Luke or Rey or General Organa or anyone else could protect everyone in the field. _Understood_ , she said. _May the Force be with you._

_And with you, Rey._

 

Chewbacca flung the ship over and over into an evasive formation, then pulled it up abruptly, causing two TIEs to collide with each other, an X-wing catching the edge of the debris, two of its engines catching light and rapidly setting the cockpit aflame; Rey cried out, suddenly feeling the sharp terror and sudden death of a pilot she had known in passing for years, and blew the First Order interceptor ahead of her out of the air in reflexive revenge. She clamped down on her grief and her anger, controlling herself, and told Chewbacca what Luke had said.

 

 _Bastards_ , Chewbacca growled, baring all of his sharp ivory teeth. Swap places with me. _You know where the Knights are._

 

They swapped again, and Rey settled into her seat and toggled the comms once more. “All squadrons – be advised, _Millennium Falcon_ engaging Knights of Ren.”

 

“Understood, _Falcon_ ,” Poe said, his voice fierce and familiar, and Rey felt herself smile as viciously as she knew Poe would be smiling.  Other squadron leaders chimed in, and Rey waited until they’d all acknowledged her. It wouldn’t do to get caught in crossfire.

 

“Let’s go,” she said to Chewbacca and Finn, picked out her first target, and swooped into the thick of the battle.

 

The next Knight of Ren was not expecting her to make a serious attack, their focus firmly on probing the minds of the vulnerable Resistance fighters, and their pilot was not skilled enough to evade Rey for long, their gunner good but never in a sufficiently strong position to land a really devastating hit on the _Falcon_. But Rey and Chewbacca managed to evade supporting fire from the TIE fighters for long enough for Finn to hit both the First Order interceptor’s engines, and Rey felt the breath she’d held tight in her chest wheeze out in a rush as the Knight of Ren shrieked through the Force like a knife down durasteel, tendrils of smearing darkness reaching out for something to hurt and grasping at nothing, and then vanished. A flight of X-wings swept in behind them, blasting away the TIEs that had scattered from their formation around the interceptor when Finn blew it up.

 

“They’re going to start paying attention now,” Rey said grimly, and Chewbacca howled and redirected a little more power to the shields. Sure enough, the _Falcon_ started to attract so much fire that Finn yelped, and Rey and Chewbacca were forced to take evasive action, diving behind the protection of one of the Resistance’s destroyers.

 

“Rey,” Finn said through her headset, with urgency. “Rey, can you –”

 

“Yes, I know, I see –” Rey replied, half her mind focused on the destroyer’s external architecture, and exploiting it for cover without drawing fire to its weaknesses, and the other half focused on the Knight of Ren now pursuing them, their hate and cruelty staining the void around them, violent enough for Finn to pick up on it easily.

 

Rey flung the _Falcon_ over into a spiral that looped around the destroyer’s side and pulled it straight up to give Finn a clear shot at the Knight of Ren’s interceptor, but this pilot was better, fearless and quick and accurate, and all Rey’s manoeuvre achieved was the loss of a cannon blown off the _Falcon_ ’s belly; adrenaline spiked in Finn’s veins and Rey felt it, but her hands stayed steady on the controls, and Finn remained the same determined steady flame she had always known him as.

 

 _Cousin_ , a very familiar voice said.

 

“Fuck off, Ren,” Rey said, both in the Force and aloud, making Finn cackle as he fired again at the wildly swinging interceptor and caught it a glancing blow, “I’m _busy_ ,” and shut Kylo Ren out of her mind with a finality that won a sort of petulant affront and a tiny flicker of amusement from him. 

 

Rey had just enough time to think that there had been a person in there once, a Ben Organa before Kylo Ren, before the Knight of Ren landed a good shot and she cursed.

 

Chewbacca pointed out that the destroyer had some excellent large ventral cannons, and Rey agreed, breathless again, flipping the _Falcon_ over and diving under, leading the interceptor a dizzying dance through the forest of weaponry on the destroyer’s underbelly, letting them almost catch her and then pulling ahead, ducking and diving and twisting until someone on the destroyer finally caught the interceptor in their sights and blew it away with a laser blast so powerful it rattled the _Falcon_ ’s shields.

  
Rey let her breath out again. _That’s all three in the interceptors down_ , she told Luke, reaching for him with the trembling strength of someone working at full capacity, breathless and keen for more, _we’re going after Ren_.

 

Luke acknowledged but said nothing. She hadn’t expected him to. Rey had been close to killing Kylo Ren at least as many times as he’d been close to capturing her, and Luke hated it; his rage at what Ren had done, to the Jedi, to the galaxy, was as fathomless as the ocean on Ahch-To, but Rey knew he still remembered a little boy called Ben Organa who had never heard the name Snoke. A child who wasn’t harmless, but who loved fiercely and generously. Luke had done everything to protect that child, and it hadn’t been enough.

 

Rey counted herself fortunate, spinning among the stars as she acknowledged the gunner onboard the _Spirit of Jedha_ , that she had never known Ben Organa. It meant she didn’t have complicated feelings about the monster he had become.

 

She glanced over at Chewbacca. “That’s the last Knight in an interceptor,” she said. “The only other is on board a destroyer.”  


Chewbacca yowled that she’d fucking better not take on a destroyer by herself, and then – staring out into space, tray-sized hands stiff on the _Falcon_ ’s controls – asked where Kylo Ren was.

 

“Attacking the _Hosnia_ ,” Rey said. “And I want to go and attack him.”

 

 _Good_ , Chewbacca rumbled, low and angry. _Good. He is a shell of what he might have been, a walking corpse. Snoke has hollowed him out._

 

Rey said nothing. Neither did Finn; she knew he could hear this through their headsets, and his understanding of Wookiee was now better than her own. Chewbacca had put a bolt through his blood-brother’s son, but that didn’t mean he would be prepared to watch Rey try to kill the man he had known from a cub. He had never seen her make the attempt before.

 

 _You end a rabid creature_ , Chewbacca said harshly. _It is the only kind thing to do._

 

Rey waited, knowing there was something else.

 

 _When you go for Snoke_ , Chewbacca said – and it wasn’t a request, or even a demand; it was an order – _take me with you._

 

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind,” Rey said, and smiled. She pushed the _Falcon_ up a gear, arcing through the blackness of space and the volleys of violently red and green tracer fire towards Kylo Ren’s interceptor, crossing the bows of the _Bail Organa_.

 

 _Cousin_ , Rey said silently to the violently flickering darkness that was Kylo Ren’s Force presence. _I’m coming to get you. So if you’re going to run, you’d better start now._

 

The interceptor that held Kylo Ren was painted entirely black, an affectation Rey knew derived from the colours of Darth Vader’s personal craft. She felt a certain scorn for anyone so insecure they modelled themselves entirely on a dead murderer, without ever thinking through any of the implications of that person’s life, and she suppressed that scorn. Now wasn’t the time to start thinking about Kylo Ren’s inherently pathetic way of life.

 

 _Cousin_ , Kylo Ren echoed her, and there was a sort of desperate eagerness in his echo. He’d always tried to demand her compliance; in some twisted way, he’d wanted her respect, and he wanted it more every time she refused it. Dimly, Rey heard Finn land telling hits on two TIE fighters, but then they all drew away, leaving Kylo and Rey to circle each other in their respective craft. _Glad to hear you’ve accepted it. Accepted our bond._

 

 _We have the same foremothers_ , Rey answered, her hands tight on the controls. Part of her noted that her breathing had fallen into the same meditative pattern she always used, and that she had reached the cold steadiness she’d first touched on Starkiller, and was grimly pleased. _No arguing with that. And no arguing that you wasted every opportunity they won for you, either._

 

_I have taken more power than any of them ever dreamed of!_

_And look what you’ve done with it!_

 

“I’ll give him something to think about,” Finn said, voice hard, and fired test shots at the interceptor hovering before them. One caught a glancing blow, but Ren was quick. Rey would give him that.

 

 _You’ve kept your pet stormtrooper_ , Kylo Ren jibed. He kept moving slightly, just enough to confuse a targeting computer; Chewbacca tweaked the shields, calculating for the likely firepower of the interceptor’s guns.

 

 _We’re coming up on our anniversary again. Don’t expect a wedding invitation_. Rey cleared her throat, which felt tight and hot – there was so much more to a conversation in the Force than just words, and the layers Ren had laid on the word ‘pet’ would have been enough to spark a forest fire’s worth of rage in her if she didn’t have such tight control of her emotions – and swallowed to summon up some saliva.

 

 _You get stronger every time we meet_ , Ren said, and there was an urgency and a longing in his voice that Rey thought spoke more loudly of loneliness than anything else. Ren had never learned to be a person by himself, it seemed; someone without people to define himself against, to bolster him. _The Dark Side has so much to offer you._

 

 _I’m not for sale_ , Rey said, listening carefully to what he wasn’t saying, and there – the tiniest flicker of intention slithered from behind Ren’s shields, and he wasn’t a good enough liar for it to be false; she passed it to Finn, faster than thought, and this time Finn landed two direct hits on key shielding components, leaving Ren half-defenceless unless he stripped his cannons of power.

 

Rey felt the backwash of Ren’s rage, and then the duel really began.

 

Rey had no space or time to think about how the rest of the battle was going; she was caught up in the weave and dive, fire and counter-fire of her fight with Ren. He had clearly given orders that they should not be interrupted, and the Resistance high command had evidently done something similar, because not so much as a rogue TIE fighter or even one of Rey’s friends among the pilots tried to intervene, even in passing. Ren had no shields to stand up to the _Falcon_ ’s cannon any more, and Rey had the edge in terms of firepower, but he was far more manoeuvrable and unafraid to damage the _Hosnia_ they fought around, or to draw Rey into damaging it; she chased him around the _Hosnia_ , but could not force or draw him into open space, and he was happy to let her tire herself out. He wasn’t trying to kill her, after all, not unless she forced his hand.

 

Rey could hear chatter on the radio. She was half-filtering it out, trying not to hear names she knew, listening for progress reports or urgent requests to clear space only as she focussed her mind on catching Ren, and then suddenly she heard what sounded distinctly like panic.

 

“Oh, no,” Finn said, dread in his voice; he was much better at not hyperfocusing than she was, and always followed the comms for her if she needed him to. “Oh no, oh  - man – Rey –”

 

“What?” Rey snapped, throwing the _Falcon_ hard over and avoiding a gunner’s post on the _Hosnia_ by the skin of her teeth. _Hosnia_ had suddenly started moving in an unexpected direction, and Rey hadn’t been able to compensate. Ren twisted and followed her, and now he was chasing her.

 

“They’ve just lost major shields on the _Bail Organa_ and Hux has manoeuvred that massive destroyer into a position where he can take out the front half,” Finn said. “The big blaster cannons are charging now. There’s no – _Jedha_ and _Hosnia_ are moving now, but I don’t think – fuck, fuck, fuck -”

 

Without conscious thought, Rey screamed into the Force: _you will **not** get both your parents killed!_

 

 _Rey!_ Finn cried, alarmed, but Ren faltered and nearly collided with an X-wing, which he fired on as if on automatic; the little craft spiralled away with only one and a half wings, heading for the _Hosnia_ ’s hangar decks and a fire extinguisher.

 

 _What?_ Ren responded, and then heeled over abruptly: Rey followed him, and found herself staring directly at the First Order’s largest destroyer, immense blaster cannons pulsating steadily violet, paling as they reached strike force, and plainly aimed at the half-defenceless _Bail Organa_. The chatter on the radio was rapid and professional as Rey saw the Resistance trying to move to protect the capital ship, but she could see there was no way they would be able to deflect the blast adequately.

 

 _Your mother is on that ship!_ she snarled, past thinking about the rationality of it. There was no reason Kylo Ren would care if General Organa died; he had murdered his own father in cold blood, Rey knew. Whatever she said now wouldn’t matter – couldn’t matter. She didn’t care: she just wanted him to know the depths of pain he had lent his strength and his skill to. _Your mother and every civilian she swore herself to protect! She deserved a better son!_

 

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then rage poured forth like magma bursting through a planet’s crust. Rey recoiled.

 

**_Hux!_ **

 

“What the hell?” Finn said in his headset.

 

“I… I don’t know,” Rey said, empty with shock and confusion as the black First Order interceptor shot ahead of them, arrowing directly towards the destroyer. Its cannons were now too bright to look at, the white heat of destruction ready to be unleashed, and the echoes of Ren’s enraged howl were still ringing in Rey’s mind. It had been so loud she thought every Force-sensitive in a craft anywhere near here would have heard it.

 

Ren’s interceptor shot towards the destroyer. “That’s the central command deck,” Rey said blankly, speaking so fast that her words tumbled into themselves as she tracked the destroyer’s path with her eyes. The destroyers used by the First Order weren’t much like those used by the Empire which Rey had ripped apart as a child, but the layouts were generally similar; the command deck, at least, was generally in the same central place. “That’s the – what is he _doing_ –”

 

Rey listened out for Ren, listened for the shifting volatility of his Force presence, and heard him snarling to someone who couldn’t talk back so Rey could hear, bringing all the weight of his willpower to bear on a single mind -

 

 _Do it, Hux! Or I’ll kill you! You and everyone who takes orders from you! You are not **worthy**!_ __  
  


  


Ren was swooping and diving, single bombing runs, but his interceptor’s cannon weren’t enough to ruin the destroyer’s shields - at least, not over the central command deck. Slowly, First Order fighters began to engage him, but Ren swatted all of them aside, extinguishing lives in the Force with a careless, easy brutality; Rey flinched, and stared as the fighters were blown sideways into the destroyer, bursting against its sides with a concussive force that forced the destroyer to rock, very slightly.

 

_We made a deal! Vader’s blood belongs with **me**!_

 

A third run, and Rey could see that the blows were beginning to tell - slowly, inexorably. She lifted her fists from the controls so she could clench them, eyes glued to the drama ahead of her, part of her hearing Kylo Ren collapsing in on himself, distilling himself down to a single point, a supernova driven by one purpose.

 

_If Rey Skywalker chooses to die in battle rather than live as my student that is one thing! If you kill Luke Skywalker, I will tolerate it! Luke Skywalker is a disgrace to his line, and Rey Skywalker has had all the chances in the galaxy! But for you to **intentionally murder** my mother because it suits your so-called tactical plan -!_

 

“I don’t understand,” Finn said.

 

“Me neither,” Rey said, “but I feel like I shouldn’t interrupt him.” Her own voice was hesitant, tentative. Confused. She glanced around, tearing her eyes from the drama still echoing in her skull, and saw that the Resistance were taking advantage of the lull to try to shield the Bail Organa, but it very clearly wasn’t going to be fast enough, even with the time Kylo Ren was - accidentally? - buying them.

 

 _You are not worthy to lay hands on Darth Vader’s daughter!_ Kylo Ren screamed. _You do not deserve the honour of taking her life! Dying at her hands would have been a sacrament beyond your wildest dreams. Stop this, Hux, or I will kill you - **I will kill you** -_

 

“Why hasn’t he just choked Hux yet?” Finn demanded, making it obvious that Finn could hear at least some part of this one-sided conversation.

 

“Maybe he can’t get close enough,” Rey suggested. There was some small artillery on the front of the destroyer that had repeatedly stung Kylo Ren’s craft, and he kept backing away from it.

 

The destroyer’s cannons flickered, began to charge down, and Rey caught her breath, but then they redoubled in strength and her hands clenched into fists on the controls.

 

**_No!_ **

 

Some of the remaining TIE fighters swooped in to attack Ren’s interceptor – “Is he going rogue?” Finn said, equally confused – but were swept aside just as surely as the others had been, and then Ren was going in for what looked like another bombing run, but either his craft was too damaged or he had lost control, because he was arrowing directly towards the central command deck, and Rey couldn’t tell if he was going to pull up or not.

 

 _What are you doing_ , Rey blurted, unable to stop herself. _What -_

 

 _No – he can’t_ , Rey heard from Luke, **_Ben_** \- _pull up, **now**_ – and there was something else, some heartbroken whisper Rey knew like her own fingerprints but couldn’t bring herself to name -

 

There was a starburst explosion on the central command deck, and Rey felt, very suddenly, the absence of Kylo Ren from the universe. Perhaps something had reached out, in the final picoseconds of his life; perhaps a piece of him that might once have answered to Ben said something, some plea, some final message. If it had done anything, Rey hadn’t heard it. But for the first time, reeling in the absence of the oppressive, unruly darkness of Kylo Ren’s Force presence, she believed that piece of Ben Organa might have existed until Kylo Ren’s very last breath.

 

The radio was silent; for half a breath, even the battle seemed to stop, as the First Order were thrown into chaos and the Resistance tried to react.

 

“Well, I wasn’t expecting _that_ ,” Finn said, into his headset.

 

Chewbacca said nothing.

 

General Organa came on the radio, sounding hoarse and tired and – for once – old. “ _Bail Organa_ , make the jump to hyperspace,” she said. She must be within range of the central comms on _Bail Organa_ ’s flight deck; perhaps, as always, she had picked herself up and acted when no-one else was capable of it. “All squadrons, _Hosnia_ and _Spirit of Jedha_ follow on. Rendezvous point 3-X-C-ii.”

 

Rey’s hands felt slow and clumsy as she typed in the memorised coordinates. It was Chewbacca who punched them into hyperspace.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Special thank-yous to brynnmclean, miraphora and especially venusmelody and serceleste. Without serceleste, I couldn't have done this. Without Brynn, miraphora and Rosa, I think I would have given up on posting.

At the rendez-vous point Rey requested permission to dock on the _Bail Organa_. Chewbacca still had not spoken; Rey had put one hand on his enormous wrist and told him she was sorry, and she’d even meant it, and he’d looked at her like he was glad she had tried but he still hadn’t said a word. Finn, for once, had dropped into the Force of his own volition and was talking directly to her mind, speculating, knitting together tiny fragments of information she almost certainly wasn’t meant to have, and generally making her head spin.

 

Her request to dock was accepted. She manoeuvred them into place and docked, then led Chewbacca and Finn off the Falcon. Chewbacca hesitated on the threshold, one hand on the battered metal of the access corridor, then shook his head and followed her and Finn. Looking back over her shoulder, Rey wondered if Ben Organa had been a spacer’s child too, once.

 

Did it matter? Ben Organa had died when Rey was a little girl scrabbling to survive on Jakku. She had never met him. Still, part of her was glad that Kylo Ren had done what he’d done.

 

She grabbed an anonymous comms officer on the way past. “When Black Squadron lands,” she said, “tell Commander Dameron we’ve gone to General Organa’s quarters.”

 

The Nautolan nodded hurriedly. Rey let go of him and kept going.

 

 

General Organa’s quarters were curiously empty for a place that was full. A couple of mid-ranking intelligence officers, people Finn had once introduced Rey to, were sitting at the polished table with datapads and flimsis spread out in front of them. Lando Calrissian leant against the edge of the table, his eyes on General Organa’s back. Luke was standing by a case of valuables, trinkets from General Organa’s travels and the odd holo, looking at a picture Rey couldn’t see. She wouldn’t have bet any credits on its being an image of Ben Organa, long-dead, and his shell now gone from the galaxy; she thought there was part of Luke that had wanted to believe there was good left in Kylo Ren the way there had been good left in Darth Vader, and whether that had been the case or not, he was grieving now, behind tight shields Rey didn’t try to touch.

 

General Organa stood with her hands clasped behind her back, looking out of a window into the darkness and peace of the backwater they had come to. Rey recognised it as one of the places she, Finn and Poe had checked out on their long-ago reconnaissance trip.

 

Perhaps it was the total silence that made the room seem so empty.

 

Rey opened her mouth, found herself stuck for words, and looked at Finn.

 

Finn looked back at her, and then looked at General Organa. “General,” he said.

 

General Organa turned, and almost smiled to see them. The bereavement Rey could feel pouring off her wasn’t reflected in her composed, grim face. She looked over at the intelligence officers. “Thank you,” she said. “That will be all for now.”  


They got up and left in silence, the door sliding shut behind them, and for a moment the room remained quiet.

 

Then Rey licked her lips and fought for words. “I didn’t make him do it,” she said. “I promise. We were talking just before he died, but I didn’t make him do it, or tell him to do it.”

 

General Organa and Lando actually did smile, and Luke set the holo down. “Oh, I know, Rey. I know.”

 

“I told him where you were,” Rey said, the words tumbling from her lips. “I told him where you were, and that the cannons would kill you – and then he just… he was shouting about Hux. General Hux, I think he –”

 

“He and Armitage Hux,” Finn supplied, “they hate each other.” He hesitated. “Hated.”

 

“He was trying to make General Hux stop firing on you,” Rey said, “and he said… it was that or he’d kill all of them. Hux and everyone who took orders from him.” She paused, hands curling into the fabric of her jacket like they wanted something to fidget with. “I don’t know if he meant to. To.”

 

“Me neither,” General Organa said, very softly. She had her hand on the back of an overstuffed blue sofa, and was looking down at it. “But then, Luke didn’t know if our father realised electrocution would inevitably kill him when he seized the Emperor.”

 

Rey said nothing.

 

General Organa’s hand curled on the sofa, the way Rey’s hands were curling in her jacket, and Rey wondered if that was a Skywalker gesture, or if it was just something Rey had learnt from General Organa over the last few years. “In any case,” General Organa said, her voice steady and cool like high altitudes, untouchable, breath-stealing, “Hux is now dead, and that removes a major obstacle to adequate dealings with the First Order. Since so many of the Knights of Ren are now dead, too, Snoke has few forces to rely on. We are that much closer to victory. At a – cost, yes. But victory.”

 

“It would be nice,” Rey said. “To see what the galaxy looks like at peace.”

 

General Organa’s smile was almost wistful. “I think so too.” She looked back at the table. “Thank you, Rey. Finn.”

 

Rey and Finn looked at each other. Both of them knew a dismissal when they heard one, but Rey at least itched to stay, to offer some kind of comfort, of something – she came with empty hands, not knowing what would be best, but this woman who had lost everything and was still kind – she deserved _something_ from Rey, who had listened to her son’s last words…

 

Finn took her hand very gently and shook his head slightly, and they moved towards the door, stepping around Chewbacca, who stood frozen a few paces behind them.

 

Lando stirred, and went over to General Organa. “Leia,” he said, and General Organa looked up into his eyes for a long moment. Then she bowed her head, and her lips folded and curved into an expression of resignation.

 

Lando shepherded Rey and Finn out as if they needed the hint, and as the door slid closed behind them, Rey heard Chewbacca say in his most subdued rumble: _The cub fought on the right side in the end._

 

A single sob got caught in the door’s slamming shut. Rey and Finn and Lando stood in a small group just outside it.

 

“There were always rumours,” Lando said, in a similarly quiet voice, “that Kylo Ren valued Vader’s blood above anything else.” He sighed, and looked up. “Guess those were true.”

 

“All the intelligence we have says that he and Hux clashed over General Organa constantly,” Finn said, low. “That Hux wanted her dead, and Kylo Ren wanted her turned. That Ren said – said no-one was allowed to touch Vader’s daughter, who might still follow his path.”

 

“He was – stupid like that,” Rey said, remembering all the times he had told her he needed a teacher, offered her a place beside him, his equal. No matter how often she had sworn she would never turn to the Dark Side, he hadn’t believed her. He had hoped, in his small, sick way, that she would join him. Maybe he had hoped the same of his mother, though _why_ , when General Organa held onto the Light like it was a battle standard…

 

They said nothing for another long moment.

 

“Ben Organa, though,” Lando said, as though it had nothing to do with anything, “he was a good kid. Little intense. But a good kid.”

 

Finn and Rey looked at each other. Lando Calrissian had been Han Solo’s closest friend, bar Chewbacca; he’d been Leia Organa’s most steadfast ally for thirty-five years. He had known his friends’ son as a child, unformed and untwisted and still so very sweet. Rey couldn’t imagine it, but she could guess that that knowledge would be painful.

 

“We’re, uh – we’re going to the X-wing hangars,” Finn said awkwardly. “You might. Uh, if you don’t want to be by yourself… Sir.”

 

“I thought I got you to stop calling me ‘sir’ years ago,” Lando said, without any bite. “No, you kids go on. I have a date with a couple of other old veterans and a litre of Bespin brandy.”

 

Rey nodded. And then she reached out and touched his wrist gently, and he looked at her like he was surprised. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she really did mean it.

 

Lando clasped her hand. “I know,” he said. His lips pressed together, and for a moment, Rey thought he might almost be about to cry. “And I guess at least this way we don’t have to put Kylo Ren on trial for war crimes.”

 

“I… Right,” Rey said.

 

“You think I haven’t been thinking about these things?” Lando demanded, mock-insulted. “Had a lawyer lined up and everything.” He nodded. “You have a nice evening, you kids. See if you can raise a smile.”

 

He turned and walked away, his cloak swinging with his movement.

 

 

Rey and Finn found Poe in a knot of cheering pilots; they heard the party before they got anywhere near the hangar. The pilots were all drinking already, which was to be expected, and when Poe saw them his face lit up and he ran over and grabbed the two of them. Rey couldn’t stop herself laughing, either at Poe’s enthusiasm or the exuberant kiss he gave Finn.

 

“He’s dead,” Poe told him, giddy. “He’s dead, he’s dead, and we _won_ –”

 

“We know, Poe,” Rey laughed, “we were there,” and lost all her breath when Poe seized her by the waist and gave her an equally enthusiastic kiss. Sparks lit up her every nerve, and she slid her arms around Poe’s chest, holding on tight.

 

“We’re going to win,” he said, pulling Finn in closer and muffling his face in Finn’s neck. “We’re going to win, and –”

 

Jessika Pava prodded him in the back and waved a bottle at the three of them. It was unlabeled – always promising - and it sloshed heavily with liquid, its colour invisible behind brown glass. Rey took the bottle, uncorked it, and took a healthy gulp. It burned going down, and made her feel halfway alight; she passed it to Finn.

  
_Raise a smile_ , Lando had said.

 

“We have a lot to celebrate,” Rey said, watching Finn tilt his head back to drink, the way the light caught on his jaw and throat. Poe’s hand was on her hip, pulling her tight into his side.

 

“And when we’re done celebrating?” Finn enquired, handing the bottle to Poe. “I haven’t got fixed quarters here. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy sleeping in bunks tonight.”

 

Rey thought of the door they’d passed on their way down, the smaller but very much extant suite of rooms marked _Skywalker, Rey_. She’d said when Luke told her she was assigned them that she didn’t see the point, and she knew it was only about who her family was anyway - but maybe the name and all the baggage that came with it had its uses.

 

She smiled. “I do.”

 

“Fancy sleeping in bunks?” Poe nuzzled his face against her hair. “You’re that nostalgic for Lah’mu?”

 

Rey slapped him lightly. “No,” she said. “I have fixed quarters.”

 

Someone put music on, something jaunty and bright and cheerful. A cheer went up.

 

“And right now,” Rey said, “I want to dance.”

 

 

Much later, sitting astride Poe’s thighs, all three of them bathed in the soft yellow glow of a spare night crystal, Rey leaned back into Finn and closed her eyes.

 

“I said once,” she murmured, “I’d bring back Kylo Ren’s head for you two.”

 

“Uh-huh?” Poe said, a little breathless, twitching restlessly under her. “You want me to remember things, you got to sit somewhere else. But yeah?”

 

Rey slid her hand back up to cup the base of Finn’s skull tenderly, and ground her hips down against Poe’s.  Finn’s fingers slid tantalizingly slowly down her bare stomach. “I mean. Will this do?”

 

Finn laughed into her neck like he was startled. “Oh, Force, yeah,” he said easily. “Bloodthirsty scavenger girl. We got our revenge.”

 

“We’re going to win,” Rey said, untwisting Poe’s hand from the bedsheets and tangling it with her own as she tilted her head to kiss Finn. “I’m not done yet. We’re going to win.”

 

“We believe you,” Finn said, and “Yeah,” Poe said, on a long, blissed-out sigh, and Rey smiled.

 

***

 

The next morning Rey was in an emergency briefing with Finn, General Organa, and a terrible hangover. By the look on his face, Luke was not at all sympathetic, and General Organa plainly knew that half her officers were nursing headaches and didn’t give a damn.

 

“Yesterday’s events have opened a window of opportunity,” General Organa said, hands clasped behind her back again, eyes wide and proud and serious. “Hux led the fanatical core who remained loyal to Snoke, and the fact that he only had two destroyers with him yesterday plainly shows that he has limited resources. One of those destroyers, the larger, is now scrap metal. All but one of the Knights of Ren are dead, and I have already received surrender details from an assortment of high-ranking First Order officers, including information which we strongly believe to be accurate as to the current whereabouts of their so-called Supreme Leader, Snoke.”

 

Rey stood up very straight, and Lando Calrissian reached out and pressed a button on the display. A star map shimmered into existence, a small dot pulsating at its centre.

 

“He keeps a base in Alderaanian airspace,” Lando said very seriously, and Rey stifled a gasp at the cruelty of it. “We were suspicious about the information, but it checks out. And if we strike now, before Snoke can reconsolidate, we have a priceless opportunity to knock him out.”

 

Rey looked at Luke; so did everyone else, except General Organa. He was standing behind General Organa’s left shoulder, dressed in his grey Jedi robes with the hood down and his lightsaber stuck through his belt.

 

He looked back at Rey and smiled implacably; the smile that had seen the Emperor die, that had ruined the Death Star, that had taken a million lives and moved with the power of the entire universe. “Now, this really is Jedi business,” he said mildly, and stepped forward into the centre of the group. “Here is what I propose we do.”

 

 

There were fifteen Jedi to attack Snoke’s palace, even if thirteen of them might not have called themselves by that name. Rey would never have guessed that there were so many prepared to answer the Resistance’s call; she had seen half of them in passing, and knew Jas and Minna, but others were completely unfamiliar to her.

 

“We’ll have to fight our way in,” she told Jas.

 

“I know,” the young Besalisk said, eyes darting around the ship that was going to land them on the base, picking out grim fighters and meditating Jedi and Chewbacca, louring purposefully in a corner. “He’s not going to give in easily.”

 

“I know,” Rey echoed, and her eyes caught and held on Finn’s. He was carrying a lightsaber and a blaster rifle. He had refused to consider staying behind, even when Rey had played her cruelest trump card: _what will happen to Poe, if we both die?_

 

She’d deserved the argument that followed, brief and explosive.

 

Luke opened his eyes and stood; so did Minna, uncoiling with menace. So did Jyne, and Thurso, and Ewon. “Be ready,” Luke said, his eyes fixed on something.

 

The ship collided with the base, and forced an entry.

 

“The Force is with us,” Jas said, lighting up their two lightsabers. “Can’t you feel it?”

 

“I thought that was just Skywalkers,” Rey retorted, and ran forward with Finn at her back.

 

 

Luke’s job was to get to Snoke. Rey’s job was to get him there. They got as far as the antechamber to Snoke’s private rooms before Luke slightly misjudged the deflection of a blaster bolt that caught him in the shoulder; Rey threw the stormtrooper that had fired it into the ceiling and they fell, crumpled and unmoving, but the damage was done. Blood was seeping from the wound, and Luke was already sitting up, grimacing. Not as seriously hurt as he could have been, but in no shape to fight, and Rey could not leave him here to face anyone from the First Order who might come and kill Luke in this weakened state. Chewbacca had already left the group, to cover a badly injured Minna’s escape and hold the retreat, incidentally killing as many of Snoke’s men as he could get in his sights; he had already killed off the last Knight of Ren before anyone else could so much as raise a lightsaber, a single shot through the head cutting them off before they could even scream. Only Finn remained with Rey and Luke, and Luke had just been shot.

 

“Shit,” Finn breathed, his eyes meeting Rey’s. He knew what their only remaining option was as well as she did.

 

“I’ll go,” Rey said. “To Snoke. Luke, you go back with Finn.”

 

“ _Rey_ ,” Luke said, and grasped her hand.

 

She gripped tightly. “We haven’t got a choice,” she said, and kissed his lined forehead. “I’ll end Snoke. And I won’t fall. I promise you.”

 

Luke stared hard into her eyes for a few moments, and then nodded. “I believe you.”

 

“I’ll come back for you,” Finn said desperately, even as he was dragging Luke to his feet, pulling Luke’s arm across his shoulders. “I will, Rey. I will. I wouldn’t leave you.”

 

“I know,” Rey said, wrapping the warmth of his affection around her like a cloak, and kissed him fiercely. “I love you. Tell Poe I love him, too. And don’t you dare come back for me, either of you.”         She shoved Finn gently, palm on his broad chest. “Go!”

 

She waited until they had turned the corner, and then she turned to face the dark, graphite-grey blast doors that were all that barred her from Snoke’s residence. She could feel the evil of his presence seeping out into the corridor, nauseating, almost overwhelming, and she took a deep, steadying breath.

 

_Think about what you feel. Fear, yes. Snoke is a powerful opponent. But this must be done, so you will do it. Anger, yes. But you are not here because you are angry; you are not here for vengeance. You are here to protect a galaxy. Hate, yes. But you are not here because you feel hate. You are here because justice is owing._

 

Even the corridor seemed darker, as Snoke welcomed her presence, alone. Stormtroopers’ bodies lolled on the floor. Blood pooled here and there as Rey walked forward, slow and steady, lightsaber lit. She could hear fighting, but not close by. Hopefully Luke and Finn would be able to make it to Chewbacca unchallenged. If not, Finn was more than capable of protecting both of them.

 

 _You can use the lightsaber because you are a Jedi_ , she reminded herself. _You are not a Jedi because you can use a lightsaber._ She raised the lightsaber to cut through the doors, and then thought better of it. Calmly, she snapped it off, and thrust it through her blue shell-lined belt. Then she prised the panel off the wall by the door, and set to rewiring it.

 

In moments, it slid open. Darkness poured out, as slick and terrifying as the darkness on the Sith planet Rey had so briefly visited, but Rey stood tall, and though it licked around her feet and flowed around her it could not touch her, not now.

 

She stepped into Snoke’s throne room. It was dark, very dark, and even as her eyes adjusted to the absence of light she had only the vague sense of something towering above her. Although she could feel every solid obstacle in the room, where Snoke’s physical body should be there was only an emptiness.

 

“So at last you have come to me,” a voice said, a voice that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. “Not, perhaps, as I had hoped. Kylo was convinced you would prove an apt pupil… perhaps he did not expect you to prove as apt as you have done.”

 

“I have come to put an end to this war,” Rey said. The station echoed and shivered with the sound of battle; Rey blocked them out.

 

Snoke laughed. “Perhaps,” he said, plainly amused. “And perhaps not – or not in the sense you mean.” Rey had the sense of something leaning in towards her; she held her ground, drawing the love of her family and her partners close under her shields like a fine green shawl, calling to the sandstorms and scouring winds and scorching suns whose strength she had earned, raising a protective barrier around herself.

 

“You are strong,” Snoke said. “But you cannot imagine that you have power with which to counter me. Come. Draw your lightsaber. Let’s see what you can do.”

 

Rey did not touch her lightsaber. Hands empty at her sides, eyes full of darkness and the Light buoying her up, she raised her head. She thought of the weakness of every Knight of Ren she had fought, a desperate need to be needed, to give their allegiance, to be owned and claimed, an insecurity that meant they gave their loyalty fiercely and committed atrocities for it.

 

Everyone had a weakness, in Rey’s experience. A desire for power, and for someone to demand that they use it, and reward them when they did, was the weakness that Snoke preyed on.

 

It wasn’t Rey’s. She reached for the Force, took a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. She left her lightsaber in her belt.

 

“Knowledge is power,” she said, and the desert woman’s voice echoed her, and so did another voice that Rey had only ever heard once in a fever, and another, that had spoken its last words the day before. And there, perhaps, were two more voices, voices that Rey had not heard speak since she was a baby and recognised on some deep level now, voices echoing her first lesson with the desert woman who had taught it to her.

 

Rey was by herself here, but she was not alone.

 

“What do you know, little Skywalker?”

 

“I know myself,” Rey said. The sandstorm she had called for rose to a roar, pressing out against the darkness; the current of the Force bore her up, and still she left her lightsaber in her belt, and she smiled, true and fearless. “Come out and fight me, Snoke. You coward.”

 

***

 

_My loved one, says the desert woman, after the Last Battle of Alderaan. Rey's body, almost as battered as her mind, is asleep on General Organa's bunk; General Organa is meditating furiously to try to handle both the pain of being in Alderaanian airspace again, and the fierce triumph of a battle won among forty-year-old planet debris. Rey is dreaming now, but she can still hear the General. Her mother's cousin._

_Are you my family? Rey asks the desert woman._

_Rey is twenty-two. She has fought and won battles; she has fought and won a war. She has a family. She still has questions._

_The desert woman smiles, bright and soft. What does your heart tell you, my loved one?_

_Rey smiles, and now she knows it is the same smile as the desert woman's._

_My blood, she says, and kisses Shmi Skywalker's lined, smiling forehead._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [ rain-sleet-snow](https://rain-sleet-snow.tumblr.com/). Come and say hi! :)


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